As I already said this morning, I find this “new economic patriotism” theme of President Obama’s to be more than a little disquieting — especially in light of this morning’s pretty pitiful economic growth numbers. It’s weirdly Animal-Farmish to me, as if I’m just supposed to keep my head down and keep working and resign myself to our currently lackluster economic performance as the new normal. Uhm, no thanks — I’ll just stick with American exceptionalism and prosperity, if you don’t mind. I find it vastly preferable to Obama’s odd Soviet-esque messaging, which is why I thought Mitt Romney was hitting the right notes during some campaign stops in Virginia earlier today in response to the GDP numbers.

“This is a real challenge for us,” Romney told a group of veterans at a rally in Springfield, Virginia. “And this is not just one quarter. This has been going on now for years.” …

“Russia tried for a while, the old Soviet Union, tried for a while to maintain a grade A, if you will, military. But they had a Grade B economy and they couldn’t keep up,” Romney said. “They finally had to – well they collapsed.”

Adding that the economies in both Russia and China are growing at several times the pace of the U.S. economy, Romney faulted the president for using the “same series of policies” over the last four years that “have not worked.”

“I know what it takes to get us working. He’s put us on a road to Europe,” Romney said. “Europe doesn’t work in Europe, all right? I want to get us back to being America.”

With such distinct differences between messaging tones from these two campaigns, I’m getting pretty pumped for the presidential debates starting next week. I know the media is trying to downplay expectations on President Obama’s performance and preemptively demoralize everyone on Mitt Romney’s, but Team Obama’s campaign relies so heavily on falsehoods and weaksauce themes like “new economic patriotism” (not to mention, some of the absolute gems Obama has come up with when he goes off the ‘prompter), there’s going to be a real opportunity for Mitt Romney to hit him where it hurts using little more than simple economics. Let’s hope he takes it!