According to Politico, Mitt Romney said this in Springfield earlier today:

I believe the economy is coming back, by the way," Romney said. "We’ll see what happens. It’s had ups and downs. I think it’s finally coming back. The economy always comes back after a recession, of course. There’s never been one that we didn’t recover from. The problem is this one has been deeper than it needed to be and a slower recovery than it should have been, by virtue of the policies of this president. Almost everything he’s done has made it harder for this economy to recover.”

This is a pretty huge shift in the Romney talking points, obviously, and it's a huge problem for Romney. All he's been able to say over the last year or so is that the economy is terrible and he's a businessman who can improve the economy. Now his case is that the economy should've bounced back (from the worst decline since the Great Depression) way faster than it did? It forces him to deliver a compliment, however backhanded it may be, to President Obama in every speech.

Worse than that, I don't think Monday morning quarterbacking is the way to win the hearts and minds of America. You need promises of something greater. The only thing that Romney could promise before was a recovery. The rest of his schtick was a series of attacks on the president. Now his promise is that he could've given us a faster recovery. The rest is all negatives. He needs to find a new promise, and fast.