With Republicans locked in on a message that President Obama has been bad for the economy, last month's
improved jobs numbers posed them a real challenge. That was immediately evident in the
crickets that followed the release of the report as the GOP scrambled to find something to say—pleasure or optimism being out of the question, of course.
The Hill reports on their
continuing efforts to respond to the problem (for them) of good economic news:
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blatantly ignored an opportunity, offered by a reporter on Friday, for the year-old GOP House majority to take credit for jobs created under its watch.
“What I’m suggesting to you today is that we can do better,” Boehner said.
“The American people are still asking a question: Where are the jobs? And while the unemployment rate is down slightly and a few more Americans are at work, we still have millions of Americans that are looking for work.”
Boehner is right—we do need to do better. But when Republicans have blocked
jobs bill after
jobs bill while offering "jobs" plans of their own that
wouldn't create jobs, and separate polls find that 49 percent of people in
Florida and 50 percent of people
nationally believe that "Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not reelected," Boehner's purported concern that "we can do better" rings a tad hollow.
The Republican tactic of blocking anything that might help the economy can work to make people like President Obama and congressional Democrats less, but it doesn't make them like Republicans more, and the moment when the economy shows signs of improvement and Republicans stick to their all negative, all the time economic message is not a good one for them.