"But not a word about actually creating a job for anyone."

Hey, it's a full-time job keeping homosexuals from getting married. That's a lot of work, in case you didn't know..

Maybe they really don't care about jobs!

Maybe they think a jobless, angry public will help them keep the House, gain the Senate, and put another Republican in the Oval Office.

If they play their cards right Republicans can do the impossible, take the blame for weak job creation and lose the next election.

Did I mention that Senator Toomey wants to pay China before Grandma if the house doesn't raise the debt ceiling. I wonder how many Chinese vote in American elections. I know a lot of grandmas do.

It's the economy, stupid!

The GOP will win in 2012 if the economy remains in the toilet and they will lose if it rebounds.

This is why the smart political move for the Democrats was to put their heads down in early 2009, leverage Obama's bully pulpit, and ram thorough the largest, most powerful stimulus package since F.D.R.

Obama's circle was always too worried about what critics would say rather than focusing laser-like on the economy.

Personally, I would rather go into an election as an incumbent with the unemployment rate at 5% and people calling me a socialist than unemployment at 10% and people calling me a free-marketer.

The interesting question to me is whether the dems can actually force a real fight over Obama's infrastructure spending proposal-- like, pass the thing in the Senate budget, dare the House to vote no, and make sure the constituents in every contested House seat know how their congressperson voted-- rather than making some noise and then quietly dropping it (like they did with the very similar infrastructure spending bill that passed the House in December 2009 then was barely ever mentioned again).

Something the Dems have historically not been good at and Republicans have been very good at is forcing the other party to play defense. In 2009 as the Democrats took office and were trying to talk about stimulus and health care, the Republicans forced a completely random fight over "card check". The Democrats didn't want to have that fight right then and alternately defended and ran away from it, but the Republicans kept the national conversation from moving on to anything else for weeks. The Democrats are now in a good place to do the same thing to the Republicans, taking a moment the House Republicans thought they'd be driving the conversation and instead forcing them to talk about a big new jobs proposal at the exact time the thought they'd be targeting spending cuts...

"while Republicans are focused on the deficit"

...unless it involves tax cuts. Remember, the deal in December was that Democrats got jobs aid legislation, in exchange for which Republicans got to increase the deficit.

The fact is, there is NOTHING conservatives can do to help the jobs situation that doesn't violate their basic principle of minimizing government involvement in the economy. You can try taxcuts, I suppose.

Square 1 gets it. The GOP's message may be incoherent in terms of empiricism but it succeeds by the simple arithmetic of its own base. Most of them are "haves". They already enjoy plenty of government perks. All they need is for their party to oppose Medicare cuts and privatize SS only for the generations after theirs. Everything else is "socialism". Yeah, it's stupid and obscenely cynical. And it works.

That many people can't be that stupid- even if they are Republicans. So-

"Maybe they think a jobless, angry public will help them keep the House, gain the Senate, and put another Republican in the Oval Office."

Posted by: c u n d gulag

-is right!

"The GOP will win in 2012 if the economy remains in the toilet and they will lose if it rebounds. This is why the smart political move for the Democrats was to put their heads down in early 2009, leverage Obama's bully pulpit, and ram thorough the largest, most powerful stimulus package since F.D.R."

And that is exactly what they did-- and it was the smart move. They did whatever it took to pass as much economic stimulus as they possibly could despite an unprecedented obstruction campaign, scoring well over a trillion dollars by this point. Now they're pushing for more. Meanwhile all the dishonest, fake-progressive bloggers have done is attack every successful attempt at economic stimulus the Democrats have taken over two years, because you care more about the Democrats "looking tough" than whether or not any stimulus actually passes.

I don't know that it's that they don't "want" a jobs program, I think it's more likely that they haven't a fucking clue what to do. In their world, slashing spending and cutting taxes are the magic bullet.

When neither works, they get mighty confused and stand around scratching their heads (and asses) in confusion.

Similarly, check out this interview with Paul Ryan from a few months back. His only response to helping the economy is repeating "creating a freer market." The show is about 45 minutes and that is his only response whenever he is asked about how his roadmap is going to help the economy.

http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/09/paul-ryan-roadmap

“I am NOT in the business of creating jobs”.

--Sharron Angle, Republican par excellence

Sorry, mcc. You are engaging in revisionist history.

Obama's team decided on the size of the stimulus before he was even sworn in. There was no effort to pass a larger stimulus package. There was no fight. There was no effort to put pressure on the GOP and Blue Dogs.

And when some of the "centrists" asked for largely non-stimulative tax cuts instead of spending, the WH happily went along, gleeful to appear "moderate" and bipartisan.

Well, the proof is in the pudding. The unemployment rate remains sky high and the economy remains in the crapper.

You provide no evidence that the WH did "did whatever it took" to pass the largest possible stimulus. Nor do you provide any evidence that a larger bill could not have passed.

Indeed, it strikes me as highly unlikely that in Obama's first 100 days the GOP could have sustained a fraction of its current unity in opposing whatever Obama wanted.

The GOP had just received a major-league ass-whooping at the polls. Obama was riding high. Half the GOP had voted to bail out the banks. Plus, 95% of America has no fucking clue about ecconomics and doesn't have the slightest clue about the difference between $500B, $1T, $1.5T, or $2T.

If the GOP had tried to filibuster a stimulus package, Obama could have just gone on TV and reamed their asses out ("They were there for Wall Street, but they aren't there for Main Street").

Even if Obama had ultimately had to compromise down to the eventual size that was passed, he would always have been able to point to what he really wanted and blamed the GOP for the sustained unemployment levels "Well, if we had passed the stimulus that I asked for then the recovery would have been faster and millions more jobs created or saved." Then the 2010 elections would have been vastly different.

Instead, Obama acted like he got all the stimulus that he wanted and has no explanation for why unemployment remains so high (Other than that American workers are apparently lazier and stupider than the Chinese. Thanks for the SOTU pep-talk, Mr. President!)

"But not a word about actually creating a job for anyone."

They aren't interested in getting anyone other than a fellow wignut jobs. AND those jobs are Congressman and Senator. Stack the deck. First it was the media, then the SCOTUS, then Congress, soon the Senate and then we are truly FU**ed.

It's as transparent as a pie to the face.

Walt, I'd halfway disagree. If elections were just the haves vs. the have-nots, then there'd have been no contest in recent years. Rather, I think you're pointing to the importance of the Teabaggers, getting a bunch of have-nots so pissed and confused that they vote against their best interests. And then with the Evangelicals still on board, we remain in horse race territory.

Personally, I would rather go into an election as an incumbent with the unemployment rate at 5% and people calling me a socialist than unemployment at 10% and people calling me a free-marketer. -square1

I don't the later scenario exists; they'll call you a socialist no matter what because it wins elections.

Simple -- conservative ideology says that nothing government does can create jobs, and only cutting taxes and regulation can even help.

You know you're a wingnut if you're capable of believing simultaneously that the unemployment rate is Obama's fault and that there's nothing government can do to create jobs.

I think at the time of the stimulus there was talk of the stimulus only being used for approved projects, that the states must use it on job creation. Now we we find some of the states used it (ie Texas) to cover up their overspending in the last budget year. Don't those states have to return the funds to the federal government?

"Part of the problem, I suspect, is that Republicans actually don't want to have a jobs plan"

Actually it's not that hard to figure out what your average republican/teabagger would say about their jobs plan. They have a really limited range of ideological talking points.

1) Cut taxes - this will stimulate business and create jobs
2) Reduce burdensome regulation (union protections, pollution laws, etc.) - this will stimulate business and jobs

Free market this, free market that. Get government off the backs of business. Blah blah blah.

Whether this makes any sense doesn't matter. It's easy for shallow nitwits like Michelle Bachmann to remember and repeat for cameras.

once again Benen has no clue about republicans.

republican "job creation" begins and ends with giving money to the rich. Its like watering a seed: shower money on the already obscenely wealthy and like magic, jobs blossom across the land. There are no other republican policies: cut taxes on the rich, eliminate all regulation, eliminate the social safety net and viola! greedhead utopia is here!

(And keep in mind, to a republican, a poverty level job bagging groceries is a perfectly acceptable "job" for a 50 year old laid off from a skilled job after 30 years of improving living standard. Why do you think republicans are so mad at immigrants? Immigrants keep stealing all those sub-subsistence jobs that their corporate buddies love to offer and their "real American" base could be sucking up.)

Recent use of "pivot" and "pivoting" in political discourse is annoying. Let no one pivot from one task or topic to another. It makes it sound like everyone in Washington is functionally rooted, as if with a flagpole up their... well that part is accurate.

“Can anyone, anywhere, actually describe the Republican plan to reduce unemployment?”

Sure.

They think that extending the failed Chimpy Bush tax cuts for the Rich & Corporate will create jobs.

I’m serious.

Look how SPECTACULAR these tax cuts for the Rich & Corporate performed at creating jobs over the past ten years.

OOPS, we LOST jobs.

Actually Republicans are unpatriotic. A patriot loves his country, not just a select group in his country. The Republican Party has proven that it votes to benefit the top ten per cent of wage earners and no one else.

not because they're unpatriotic.
BS. They don't give a damn about the people who have to work to make a living in this country.