Republicans Fear That If Unemployment Goes Down, So Will Their Chances To Win In 2012

Obama's "jobs" speech last week may only have scratched the surface of solving the country's economic crisis but there are absolutely some good proposals mixed in with all the tax cuts and the hodgepodge of failed conservative proposals. And predictably, the Republicans want to cut those good parts out and pass all the bad parts. Who couldn't have seen that coming a mile away?

House Republicans responded by signaling an openness to passing parts of Obama’s new jobs bill, while signaling disapproval of Obama’s vow to barnstorm the country to get the American Jobs Act passed in its current form.

“The message was: either accept my package as it is, or I will take it to the American people,” Eric Cantor said. “I would say that that’s the wrong approach.”

Today, the White House offered its answer: Sorry, we want the whole bill passed. Nothing less.

With the spin war over the speech now shifting to a phase where Republicans are telegraphing a desire to compromise, even as Obama hits the road to sell his whole plan to the American people, this exchange on MSNBC this morning between Chuck Todd and White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer struck me as important:

TODD: The bill gets sent to Congress next week. Are you guys assuming that it gets sort of piecemealed, that at the end of the day you’re going to get some of what you want but not all of what you want?

PFEIFFER: No, we’re not assuming that. The president said it 16 times, I’ll say it a 17th time today. He wants them to pass the American Jobs Act. That’s the piece of legislation he’s sending up. It’s a simple thing. Puts the Americans back to work and puts more money into the pockets of working families. Our belief is that everything in this bill is reasonable. Everything in the bill has bipartisan support. Everything will have an effect right now. And so we want them to pass it.

After the president spoke we highlighted how a New Hampshire progressive candidate for Congress, Ann Kuster, was looking at the unemployment situation. She put a far more effective proposal on the table than President Obama did and told New Hampshire voters that "It is time-- in fact, it is way past time-- to make job-creation the single, critical priority of our entire nation." She continued:

Washington has spent plenty of time lately on other issues, from genuine crises like Libya to political distractions like the debt-ceiling debate and efforts to end Medicare. But we cannot afford to go another month without real solutions for getting more Americans back to work. 

I may sound like a broken record-- for the past two years, whenever I have been asked about the top three issues facing our country, my reply has been “Jobs, Jobs, and Jobs.” But the truth is, this Congress has done next to nothing to promote an economic recovery and get Americans back to work.

How do we do it? Education is how we grew an economy this strong in the first place, and it is where we have to start again. Innovation has been a powerful competitive advantage for America, and we can’t afford to lose our edge. And Rejuvenation-- of our bridges & roads, cities & towns, and economic networks (highways and broadband communications)-- that's the key to a country that is built to win the future.

New Hampshire has two congressional districts and the other one is also held by a rubber stamp Republican, Frank Guinta, with absolutely no inclination to solve the mess conservatives created for working families. Next year will see a re-match between Guinta and former Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter. Carol responded to the Republican obstructionism after Fox aired a Republican Party propaganda segment on Hannity's show.

“After spending his whole vacation insisting that he was so bipartisan now that he was friends with Barney Frank, it did not take our current Congressman, Frank Guinta, a New York minute to condemn President Obama's Jobs Program. One of the top Republican leaders, Rep Eric Cantor, said, 'But there are some things that we can do if we transcend those differences and stick to what the mission here is,' but Frank [Guinta] simply refused to be bipartisan at all, flatly stating, 'they got more failed policy and empty eloquence'."

Like Ann, Carol vows to New Hampshire voters she will work in Congress in the interests of ordinary working families and small businesspeople. If you'd like to contribute to their campaigns, they're both on the same page.


THE SUNDAY CLASSICS POST DEVOTED TO BORODIN'S PRINCE IGOR (following Friday night's and last night's previews) is coming up at 2pm PT.