The cost of Republicanism

Krugman's blog assertion that there's "Nothing to see here" in the jobs report is essentially an abridged version of his column's restatement of Bill Clinton's "zinger" Wednesday night: "We [Republicans] left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in."

"[A] bit below expectations" is the jobs report's subdued, sober economic consensus, while the sober political consensus is anything but subdued; indeed, it's positively striking that any new jobs were at all created, given the congressional GOP's punishing program of forced economic austerity.

What we're witnessing today is merely the best of all possible--which is to say, allowed--syntheses: Obama's stimulus and accompanying economic policies sparked a far more aggressive recovery, which has since slowed, because of Republicans' applied brakes, into a plodding predictability.

Yet it's the opportunity costs of Republicans' power-at-any-price ideology that, from a purely conceptual plane, hurt most. Where would the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed now be had the GOP chosen patriotic cooperation over partisan sabotage? About 7 percent, and roughly 2 million fewer. That's where. What's more, the first statistic would be even lower, and the second even higher, had Republicans not hissed and spit and fumed and fulminated over the original stimulus proposals.

But here we are ... Republicans dancing in the streets over the considerable triumph of sociopolitical sadism, while executive competence struggles to cope with an utterly dysfunctional constitutional system, courtesy the sadists.

Comments

[japa21]

Actually, forget for a moment what would have happened had the jobs programs Obama wanted ahd been enacted. The real killer is all the public sector jobs lost, most in Republican governed states. Those jobs, which could have been saved by following Obama's policies even before he presented the Jabs Act, would have current unemployment under 7% and with the Jobs Act enactment probably below 6%.
But that wuld have killed any chance of the Republicans winning the WH. But maybe not, because the GOP could have taken credit since the own the House. Instead, in their obstinancy, they cut their own throat.

[Robert Lipscomb]

When i was in high last century, we had something called "study hall". It was the one or two free hours during your day with no real classes. So you went to a really big hall (probably an old gym) and studied.

The walls were decked with large framed "class pictures" - each graduating senior's senior picture grouped together, with class officers and teachers at the top, the year of the graduating class and the class motto.

it was easy to be bored in study hall, so I looked at all the class pictures and read all the mottos. One stood out and has stayed with me all these years.

"Push, pull or get out of the way."

I think that was the implicit motto of this year's DNC convention. The rest of the country is fighting like hell to get out of this hole, and the Republicans are wallowing in our misery.

I believe Obama's speech can be distilled down into, "Push, pull or get out of the way.'

I would like to add, "Quit lying and shut the fuck up."

[mdblanche]

@japa21 The Jobs Act would have guaranteed Obama's re-election, but it also would have secured most Congressional Republicans' re-election. However compromise is no longer in their nature. They're going for all the marbles. But in doing so, they risk getting none.

[majii]

I'm down in GA, the state where republican policies continue to fail and few voters seem to learn from it. Earlier this week, the local paper reported that the unemployment rate in GA is up. I read it, dismissed it, and continued on to reading other parts of the newspaper. I've ceased to care if the unemployment rate in the state goes up. I'm sick of the ignorance. The right-wingers wanted Deal, and they got Deal, and now they'll have to deal with Deal. They were so anti-Obama in 2010 that they refused to vote for Roy Barnes who had been our governor before and had improved the economy. All the mouth breathers could focus on was saying was, "We're a conservative state," "We're a conservative state,' "We're a conservative state..." A few months ago, someone wrote a LTE praising Deal for improving the state's economy. Stupid person didn't know that it was the stimulus funding the state received that helped boost the economy. I have a limit when it comes to dealing with ignorance and persistent stupidity, and I've reached it. These are the same jackazzzez that keep sending Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson to Congress to do absolutely nothing for them. Chambliss returned to GA during the August recess and proceeded to write an op-ed blaming the president for the potential cuts to the defense budget. He sat on his behind and voted in lockstep to obstruct everything the president wanted to do. The most ironic thing was his empty promise that "the Gang of Six might work out a solution after the November elections." This tool knows that if President obama wins in November, he'll line his butt up with McConnell and the other other republicans and order another round of gridlock cocktails from the GOP menu.