Credit Mitt Romney with originating what should and almost certainly will be an argument we hear from Republicans in the general election against Barack Obama.  Romney attacked Obama for the debt downgrade from S&P that took the US from AAA to AA+ for the first time in decades, thanks to massive expansion of debt and deficits under Obama’s leadership with no plan to solve either.  CNS news has a clip of Romney speaking at a campaign stop in Exeter, New Hampshire, and of the former Massachusetts governor giving Obama a different rating than the “good, solid B-plus” Obama gave himself at the end of 2009:

“I want to make America the strongest economy on earth,” Romney said at a campaign stop in Exeter, N.H. “What I’ve seen and said from this president is not a AAA presidency but I’ll call it a DDD presidency. It’s been a presidency which has been associated with debt and with downgrade and with delay.”

I’m less impressed with the obligatory attack on Obama’s “vacation”:

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, also took a swipe at Obama for vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard.

“You’ve got 25 million people out of work right now Mr. President, out of work or in part time jobs needing full time work or the stopped looking for work,” Romney said. “You shouldn’t be on the vineyard playing golf. You should be doing your job putting Americans back to work.”

Yes, I know every Republican candidate will hit this hanging curve out of the park.  Obama provided his opponents and critics with an easy line of attack by choosing the upper-crust destination of Martha’s Vineyard for his getaway, but as I’ve written before, no modern President ever goes on vacation.  The job follows wherever they go.  I’d go after the fact that Obama hasn’t come up with an original plan to encourage job creation since the failed Porkulus bill, going AWOL on the subject since then by concentrating on passing massive expansions of government regulation and control over health care and financial services, and that even after economic indicators started sinking rapidly, Obama has yet to react to them.  That’s not a problem of just the past two weeks, but a problem of the past two years.

But the triple-D line is pure gold.  Even if Romney doesn’t win the nomination, Republicans shouldn’t forget it.