Newest Fox News piece: Liberals and the Texas Unemployment Miracle

If this is the best that the Democrats can do to attack Rick Perry's Texas, the election might already be over. Democrats feel that they have to attack Texas because they don't have any way to defend Obama's policies. This is how my newest Fox News piece starts:

With Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry officially entering the presidential race last week, liberals have started attacking Texas' economic record.
Paul Krugman in the New York Times went first last Sunday. "So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment," Krugman claimed.
With the latest Gallup poll showing that just 26 percent of Americans approve of President Obama's performance on the economy, liberals have little choice but to try to distort what is happening in Texas.

"In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. . . ."

The Texas unemployment rate is about one percentage point lower than the national average, and it is true that other states such as New York and Massachusetts also have very similar rates (see the diagram here). . . . .

Please leave comments and link to this piece. Thank you.

A closely related piece at National Review Online has gotten a lot of attention.


See also this discussion here at the Political Math Blog.