Walker Says Unemployment Rate Drop Won’t Hurt Romney

Just as job numbers were watched closely in Wisconsin’s recall campaign, today’s drop in the national unemployment rate was being talked up by President Obama. But Gov. Scott Walker says it won’t hurt Mitt Romney’s chances.

While Romney himself called the drop in the unemployment misleading, Walker told reporters today that it was a good sign, “Absolutely. And the hope is that that will continue.”

But the governor stopped short of saying the numbers were a validation of Obama administration policies, “Well, if you look, the stimulus was passed a few years ago and if that was the case, it would have happened right after that. You had up until now 43 consecutive months of unemployment above 8 percent. For the first time we have a drop into 7.8. It is still, I think, more of a reflection of people regardless of the government trying to persevere and try to move forward.”

Walker contends the new national numbers won’t hurt Romney if he’s as aggressive in the remaining debates as he was in the first one. The governor says people want to know the candidates’ plans, “We understand the past four or five years have been tough. We want to have a leader who’s going to help us make things better in the future.”

Walker is in a different position than most Romney surrogates. It’s only been a few months since the governor was highlighting a drop in Wisconsin’s unemployment rate for his recall campaign even as other employment measures were lagging.