Democrats are at it again, claiming that Republicans, particularly House Republicans, are sabotaging the economy, while ignoring the quite effective job President Barack Obama has done to ruin the economy both on his own (regulatory and anti-fossil fuel hostility, wasteful green "investments," etc.) and with the help of Congressional Democrats when they controlled both Houses of Congress (stimulus, ObamaCare, trillion-dollar deficits, etc.).
The best argument against this nonsense is that if Republicans were really interested in hurting the economy, GOP governors wouldn't be doing good to even great jobs with their own states' economies. At the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Josh Lederman, reporting from the National Governors Association meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia, attempted to frame a response to GOP governors' contentions (in bold after the jump) which qualifies as the howler of the day:
The Democratic governors' concerted effort to impugn Republicans' motives suggests Democrats may seek to assign blame to Republicans for a weak economy, rather than working to convince voters that the economy is improving under Obama and just needs more time. But that argument is a double-edged sword for Democrats, because it forces them to fully confront economic realities - including an unemployment rate that is hovering at 8.2 percent nationally. No president has been re-elected with the unemployment rate above 7.2 percent.
On the other hand, Republican governors face the awkward task of touting growth in their own local economies while arguing that progress has come despite - not because of - Obama's leadership.
Gee, how "awkward" is it to point out that your state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has fallen far more than the national average of 0.9 points, or just under 10% using straight division (from 9.1 percent to 8.2 percent) since January 2011, when a host of new Republican governors took office? Here's just a sample, from a list first compiled by Robert Elliott at Examiner.com earlier this month:
- Alabama - 9.3% to 7.4% = a decline of 1.9 points (20% using straight division)
- South Carolina - 10.6% to 9.1% = a decline of 1.5 points (14%)
- Florida - 10.9% to 8.6% = a decline of 2.3 points (21%)
- Nevada - 13.8% to 11.6% = a decline of 2.2 points (16%)
- Iowa - 6.1% to 5.1% = a decline of 1.0 points (16%)
- Ohio - 9.0% to 7.3% = a decline of 1.7 points (19%)
- Michigan - 10.9% to 8.5% = a decline of 2.4 points (22%)
- Oklahoma - 6.2% to 4.8% = a decline of 1.4 points (23%)
- Tennessee - 9.5% to 7.9% = a decline of 1.6 points (17%)
If the Democrats are looking for politicians who are hurting the economy (besides their party's congressmen and the president himself, of course), they might ask the Democratic governors of four states with just over 25% of the nation's workforce why they're doing what they're doing:
- California (unemployment rate: 10.8%), where Jerry Brown is running huge deficits and celebrating -- yes, celebrating -- the permission slip he just received from the state's legislature to get started on building a $69 billion (before overruns) "high-speed rail" system from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
- New York, where the unemployment rate has increased from 8.2% to 8.6%. Why is nobody asking Governor Andrew Cuomo why he's ruining things for the incumbent president?
- Illinois, where Barack Obama's Democrat-controlled home state has an unemployment rate of 8.6% -- and mountains of unpaid debts to vendors and third-party government service providers.
- North Carolina, home of Governor Beverly "let's not have Congressional elections this time around" Perdue, and host state for the deficit-riddled Democratic National Convention, with an unemployment rate of 9.4%.
While these states are ruining things for Obama (or "sabotaging" them, if you will) by imitating at the state level what Obama is doing in Washington, the rest of the nation's unemployment rate is 7.7%, a full half-point lower than the national average:
But the establishment press, including the AP's Lederman, apparently won't look into any of this Democratic "sabotage" themselves (though Lederman did allow Iowa's Republican governor to take a few rips at the sad situation in Illinois late in his report). I guess that's because it would be too "awkward."
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
