"C'mon now, John. Don't embarrass yourself here."
House Republicans say
they have a battle plan for 2014:
House Republican leaders are increasingly confident the economy will be a winning issue for their party in the 2014 midterm elections.
Republicans believe they can exploit the underlying weakness of the job market and argue voters should expect a better economic recovery than they are seeing under President Obama’s watch. [...] “It’s going to be about the issue of jobs, and when you look at it, the American people have a right to continue to be asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’ ” [House Speaker John Boehner] said, returning to his favored refrain for the Obama presidency. “The president has been in office now for almost five years. It’s time for the president to admit that his policies are not working.”
So, in addition to bashing Obamacare, Republicans will bash the Obamaconomy, and the House GOP majority will live happily ever after.
Of course, they will have to explain why they don't think that during their tenure in the majority, their singleminded obsession with repealing Obamacare and cutting spending has not only led to complete gridlock, but also forced a damaging government shutdown and repeated debt limit hostage crises. But surely the power of this new economic message will be enough to carry them to victory, right?
Well, maybe it's worth remembering that this message isn't exactly new—here's what Boehnerland was saying in 2012:
Boehner has repeatedly argued that the November election will be a referendum on Obama’s failed stewardship of the economy — and that message isn’t likely to change any time soon.
“This president has failed miserably on the economy and broken promise after promise to the American people,” a senior GOP aide said. “This election should be about him and his failed economic policies.”
So what's new here isn't that Republicans are planning to attack President Obama over the economy—it's that they're saying that this time it will work. But given that their big solution to weak economic growth is to repeal Obamacare and cut spending, that's not a claim worth believing.