Rick Perry and Jobs claim

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/26/rick-perry-touts-jobs-record-in-first-paid-ad/

Rick Perry has used his first paid Television advertisement to make a promise.  The ad claims “Rick Perry will create 2.5 million new jobs”.  As Kevin Bohn’s article entitled, Rick Perry touts jobs record in first paid ad on CNN’s website notes, Perry is using jobs promises in order to boost his campaign.  Perry obviously feels like he can back up this claim with his past history of the DREAM act and his job creation success as governor in Texas.  Perry said, “’I know something about’ job creation. […] In Texas we’ve created over one million new jobs while the rest of the nation lost over two million.’” (Bohn).  Perry did have some success in Texas and has that prior success to draw upon.  I think it’s clear that Perry is targeting job creation in order to combat Mitt Romney, as Romney, who is currently a leading candidate, is tackling the issue as well.   In fact, Romney’s communications director, Gail Gitcho said in a statement, as noted by Bohn, “Today’s campaign ad doesn’t tell the whole story, failing to mention that unemployment in Texas has doubled on Perry’s watch and more than a million workers in his state are out of a job.  Mitt Romney is a conservative businessman who is focused on getting Americans back to work and reviving this economy.” (Bohn).   Perry seems to hope that Americans will not look into these currents statistics, but rather just go off of Perry’s positive history in job creation.  Perry clearly sees his competition in Romney and is trying to compete with him on the topic of job creating and economic reform.  Perry is making a bold effort to do so as we see in his claims in his Television ad.  I am a little worried for Perry as he tries to win over voters on this topic because it seems as if Romney has a foothold on the issues of our economy.  Perry may need to focus more on catering to the religious groups that support him in order to find more success in his campaign.