Posted on 12/23/2009 7:29:30 AM PST by SeekAndFind
President Obama is like a pilot who took the controls of the plane in mid-flight after the engines fell out. It’s obvious that he didn’t cause the problem. But the passengers are going to focus on the fact that the plane was still airborne before he took over, and now, he’s crash-landing in the ocean.
That’s Obama’s problem in the debate over the economy. His arguments are true. The trouble is, they don’t feel true, and they feel less and less true as time goes by.
Republicans focus relentlessly on the simple fact that the economy is in worse shape now than it was before Obama took office. The trajectory may have improved, but the level has worsened--more people are out of work now than on January 20.
The Obama administration predicted in January that, if its stimulus package passed, unemployment would stay below 8 percent, yet it has crossed 10 percent. You have probably heard this statistic if you have heard any Republican in elected or unelected office open his mouth at any point over the last half-dozen months. The implication of this statistic--sometimes made explicit--is that the stimulus failed to alleviate, or even caused, rising unemployment.
The more plausible interpretation is that the Obama administration’s January forecast, along with most private forecasts at the time, underestimated the depth of the recession. One bit of evidence for that view is that unemployment hit 8 percent by February, which was about the same time that the stimulus passed and long before it could take effect.
What level unemployment would have reached without a stimulus is, of course, a total guess. Republicans have ridiculed the administration’s efforts to tabulate the jobs that the stimulus saved. The implication here is that, because you can’t count something, it doesn’t exist.
(Excerpt) Read more at tnr.com ...
Obama and the Dems have turned a bad situation into a disaster.
THE PRETENDER IN CHIEF PROMISED HIS STIMULUS PACKAGE WOULD RESULT IN A MAXIMUM OF 8% UNEMPLOYMENT. THAT IS THE FACT THE MEDIA IS IGNORING!!!
So they can pretend or explain away all they want. The fact remains: Obama is a failure.
Obama was a US Senator since 2005 blocking all legislation to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He caused this mess! It’s his baby 100%!
The author then turns the tables on Republicans by noting this :
The Republican strategy here consists of two nifty steps.
* Step one consists of affixing Obama with the blame for rising unemployment.
* Step two is, when Obama points out that the economic collapse occurred before he took office, pummel him as a classless blame-shirker. Columns by National Review editor Rich Lowry (“Obama the graceless”), Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn (“The post-gracious president”), and numerous other conservative worthies have harped upon this theme. Obama must accede to the Republican campaign to blame him for the consequences of the 2008 economic collapse because to do otherwise would violate social etiquette.
It is in the author’s opinion unfair to simply blame Obama for doing this because President Bush repeatedly asserted that he “inherited a recession”—the one that began in March of 2001—from Bill Clinton. He also charged that Clinton’s weakness in the face of terrorism emboldened Al Qaeda to strike on September 11, which I would argue is even ruder than anything Obama has said about Bush. That particular theme also features prominently in Rich Lowry’s 2003 book, Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.
He then concludes thusly :
Today, by overwhelming margins, the American public favor an immediate balanced budget, even in the face of economic catastrophe.
That is, in his opinion, insane.
But Republicans have taken full advantage of the public’s fiscal insanity. President Bush used to scoff at proposals to pay down the national debt, saying, “The surplus means the government has more money than it needs.” Nowadays, Republicans like John Boehner say things like, “American families are tightening their belts,” and, therefore, Washington should “lead by example and show the American people that the government can go on a diet as well.”
What sounds to the American people like simple common sense is economic malpractice, and vice versa. Thus the Democrats’ predicament: High unemployment is making them unpopular, but the only steps they can take to reduce unemployment are themselves unpopular. If the Democrats actually gave the people what they say they want—$1.4 trillion in spending cuts and/or tax hikes to eliminate the 2010 deficit—Republicans would capture approximately 100 percent of Congress in the next election.
“The American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. “They understand we have to deal with jobs and deficits in a coordinated strategy.” If the administration is dumb enough to actually believe that, it would help explain how they’ve let Republicans win the political argument over the economy.
A new way to say... Bush's fault!
What a bunch of crap! A better analogy would be that Obama is driving a car downhill and then decides to remove the brakes even when the passengers scream at him not to.
BS, Zero is doing all this on purpose (to destroy our country) Yes, I truly believe this.
The elephant in the room is that Obama’s entire agenda is making the economy worse. Only the fool libs fail to understand it....
hh
They are right afterall, it WAS the Democratic congress elected in 2006 that was undoing the motor mounts...
And here's where it gets even getter: Obama’s trickiest dilemma is that the public does not agree with--or, to put it less charitably, understand--the basis for his anti-recession strategy.
That's the problem; we're just not as smart as them. Problem solved!!
Democrat Party ecomomic policy manual (”Economics for Dummies”):
Any economic problems, 1929 -2000: Herbert Hoover’s fault.
Any economic problems, 2000 - present: George W. Bush’s fault.
Started with the 2006 Dem Congress.
Obomem is just a puppet of The Federal Reserve and the globalists. The country is being plundered all in advance of the IMF privitizing/pirating anything that can be monopolized.
He is awar criminal too, although most people at FR don’t see that as a prroblem. He carries on the drug war like the CIA isn’t the biggest drug trafficker on the planet and the financial oligarchy of the planet like the way things are.
We have already been enslaved. Obomem is just the present Chief Evil Overlord waiting for those carbon tax dollars he was told to decree.
Tripling the national is OBAMA’s FAULT. I do NOT accept the premise that BUSH caused this. Its about time Republicans start taking it to these liberals and beat them at their own game. Being nice like McCain and Bush got us here. Start proudly denouncing political correctness, yell Merry Christmas...scream pro-life, speak of GOD, sing patriotic songs...and call out evil behavior for what it is. LET’S ROLL...
Yep.
It's easy to blame the economic collapse on Bush -- after all it DID start on his watch -- until you consider that it was purely DEMOCRAT policies that caused it!
GWB was one of few voices in Washington who warned and warned and WARNED that federal lending laws were creating a monster. Now the very same fools who ignored those warnings want to shift the blame on Bush for failing to kill the same monster!
An entire article dedicated to blaming Bush and making excuses for Obama. Even if they are right what’s their point? Imagine applying this standard to every elected official. No one would be held accountable for anything. And the country would fall apart while they spend every waking minute trying to find ways to convince the public that every thing’s okay.
Oh... that’s what is actually happening.
Nah. Obama is like a post turtle. Pure and simple.
instead of a belly landing with injuries, Bammy takes us all nose first at 500 MPH, killing all.
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