C’mon. It’s a little bit about Obama eating dogs. The data doesn’t lie, my friends.

The sad truth: A few more months of weak job growth and The One might actually prefer an election about dog-eating.

Mitt Romney today asserted that the general election will be about “jobs not dogs,” when asked by a radio host today about the media’s focus on his former dog Seamus and the president’s admission that he once ate dog meat.

“This campaign is ultimately going to become about jobs not dogs,” said Romney in an interview with Bill Cunningham on WLW radio in Ohio. “You recognize of course that some members of the media, and certainly the DNC and the White house itself are going to do everything in their power to divert the attention of the voter from the failure of the president to try to turn around the economy.”…

Romney appeared uninterested in furthering the story line about his own dog or the president’s childhood meals, instead bringing the focus of the interview back to the way President Obama has handled the economy.

As president and would-be president, O and Mitt have to rise above the mouth-breathing stupidity of dog-themed talking points. Fortunately for bloggers like me who are hungry for cheap traffic, there are plenty of surrogates out there who don’t. Tell ’em what’s up, “Dogs Against Romney” guy:

The founder of the grassroots organization Dogs Against Romney called the Romney campaign “desperate” for dredging up the revelations that President Obama ate dog meat as a child in Indonesia.

“It seems desperate for the Romney campaign to bring up something that happened to Obama when he was 10 years old, not preparing his own meals, in a country where eating dog meat probably isn’t all that unusual as if it compares in any way to Romney, as a 36-year old adult, in America, making the conscious decision to strap his family pet to the roof of a car for a 12-hour drive, and leaving it up there even after it got sick.”…

“If President Obama had made the conscious decision to eat dog meat as a 36-year old adult, in America, claimed the dog liked being eaten, and still claimed he didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, the Romney campaign would have a point and my pack would be on the president like a pack of wild, well….dogs,” Crider wrote. “But that isn’t what happened.”

I love the fact that even for a meme as dumb as this, which is being pushed as a goof on how moronic the Democrats’ “dog” attacks on Romney are, you’ve still got Obama shills very earnestly engaging with the subject to try to draw a contrast. But then, they have to, right? Like I said last night, the story about Mitt and Seamus really is part of Hopenchange’s campaign strategy. They’re not going to win on the issues but maybe, if they spend enough, they can create enough of a “likability gap” to nose out Romney at the wire. See streiff at Red State for more on that. Quote: “If he can convince you that Romney is a cross between Scrooge McDuck and Moe Howard who adheres to a very strange set of religious beliefs then he wins.”

Here’s Scarborough and company treating the “dog” wars with precisely the degree of seriousness that they deserve.