(The Root) — The Republican Party has spent the past three years honing its winning political strategy: to lie, keep lying and hope Americans will believe it. The monthly jobs report released by the Labor Department has become a circus event for these shenanigans, giving Mitt Romney, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) regular opportunities to cry foul, blame President Obama for a crisis of their party's own making and deflect cause and effect.

This June's report was released on Friday and showed modest improvement of 84,000 jobs added. Naturally, President Barack Obama responded tepidly to the slight gains: acknowledging that so much more needs to be done to restore the 8 million jobs lost during the Bush-Cheney recession and highlighting the fact that positive job growth is always a step in the right direction. And with more than 4.4 million jobs added under Obama's leadership -- and millions more saved by his bailout of Detroit automakers and the stimulus package -- the president reminded Americans that things are getting better.

Romney — fresh off a Jet Ski-filled vacation at his $8 million summer estate in New Hampshire — used the unemployment figures as an opportunity to attack Obama's record. "The president's policies clearly have not been successful ... in reigniting this economy," Romney opined. "The kick in the gut has got to end." This is the well-rehearsed GOP playbook: Ignore all progress, paint a grim picture, call every Obama success a failure and claim that his every strength is a weakness.

Romney, who has yet to articulate an immediate plan to create jobs, spins a web of lies. And like much of the GOP's rhetoric, what Romney says makes no sense. What is most troubling is that much of the unemployment malaise could have been avoided had congressional Republicans acted on President Obama's plan announced last September, the aptly named American Jobs Act.

President Obama proposed the AJA at a time when the country was creating an average of more than 200,000 jobs per month. The $450 billion package of fiscal measures amounted to nearly 3 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) and was designed to take effect in 2012. Tax cuts -- the Republican holy grail -- made up about 56 percent of the AJA's total cost and were completely paid for by the president's long-term deficit-reduction plan. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that the AJA "could have a noticeable impact on economic growth and employment in the next few years."

Read the full story at theroot.com.

The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of BET Networks.

BET Politics - Your source for the latest news, photos and videos illuminating key issues and personalities in African-American political life, plus commentary from some of our liveliest voices. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. 

(Photo: EPA/CJ GUNTHER /LANDOV)