By: Jeffrey Klein
Political Buzz Examiner

This morning, the U.S. Commerce Department released the second quarter GDP growth figure, which at 1.5 percent met street expectations that were already severely reduced by 25 percent from the already anemic 2.0 percent first quarter GDP figure.

In a parallel historical context, in the 1992 presidential election year the second quarter GDP rate was 3.4 percent, which propelled Bill Clinton’s 370 to 168 electoral vote victory over first term President George H.W. Bush, using the plank … “It’s the economy, stupid!”

It could well be that the Q2 GDP figure will act like a proverbial iceberg blowing a hole in the below-waterline hull of the 2012 Obama reelection campaign–sinking it like the Titanic.

But, as usual there are two interpretations to the news.

The Romney campaign quickly convened media conference call, to declare that the disastrous Q2 GDP growth figure is the latest sign that the economy under Barack Obama’s watch simply cannot produce enough growth to put millions of jobless Americans back to work, according to a FOXNews article today.

Romney economic adviser Dean Glenn Hubbard had this to say…

It’s a picture of a decelerating economy … At that pattern, the economy simply will never return to full employment.

The White House, in a desperate search for a ‘bright side,’ trotted out the third person to hold the Chairmanship of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, whose spin was that–technically–the economy is still growing.

Today’s report shows that the economy posted its twelfth straight quarter of positive growth … While the economy continues to move in the right direction, additional growth is needed to replace the jobs lost in the deep recession that began at the end of 2007.

Trading Economics (TE), which provides its users with accurate information for 232 countries including historical data for more than 300.000 economic indicators, called it like this…

The deceleration in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected a deceleration in ‘Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE).

The TE historical U.S. Quarterly GDP performance bar graph clearly indicates that we may be in for a ‘double-dip’ recession, as Wall Street would characterize the “trend line” of the past four quarters appears to be a small ‘dead-cat bounce’ from a two quarter recovery.

When the past 8 quarters is considered, the overarching trend, since President Obama signed his ‘landmark’ Obamacare legislation into law March 2012, is a virtually uninterrupted linear plunge of quarterly GDP growth from 3.8 to the current 1.5 percent.

Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at BTIG LLC arrived at this conclusion…

The main take away from today’s report, the specifics aside, is that the U.S. economy is barely growing … Along with a reduction in the actual amount of money companies were able to make, it’s no wonder the unemployment rate cannot move lower.

This “trail” of economic destruction is also evidenced by the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau statistics released this past week, which showed that 223,000 American businesses, with up to 99 employees each, failed between 2008 and 2010–taking 3.1 million workers with them, according to a FOXNews article yesterday.

According to the results of Rasmussen’s Weekly Presidential Tracking Poll from last week–capturing the fallout from Obama’s pivotal spontaneous utterance … “you didn’t make that [successful business],” added another point to the Romney camp, who now enjoy a five point, 49 to 44 advantage over the president. And to the question of who is trusted more to handle the economy–Romney has a 49 to 43 advantage over Obama.

What do you think the Rasmussen poll results next Friday reveal, once the populace absorbs all the bad news from this week?

Sound-minded Independents, who were still considering a vote for Barack Obama, will have responded to the blaring emergency horns and the command to “Abandon Ship!”