GOP Tanking Economy so Obama Looses 2012

What are the GOP goals? In 2010 Minority Senate Leader stated his number goal: To make Obama a one-term President. Examiner.com reported that when asked Mr. McConnell replied that "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

I heard him. He was very clear that in the face of the "Great Recession", a steep decline in the housing market, high unemployment and bank failures, all the Grand Old Party is concerned with is politics. So now let's see how they have accomplished this goal.

Step One: Keep Unemployment High.
Presidents do not get re-elected when unemployment rates are high. As President Obama was elected when unemployment was already high and over 8% this was not going to be a hard job. Just looking at this historically according to AOL Jobs "No American president has been reelected when unemployment has been higher than 7.2 percent in more than 50 years. It's a refrain that's been thrown around in the pages of The New York Times and in nearly every conversation when Barack Obama's chances for reelection are discussed, both inside the Beltway and beyond." Therefore all the GOP has to do is block any legislation aimed at growing the economy and therefore reducing unemployment. That leads us to

Step Two: Block Legislation Aimed at Growth
The GOP forced a substantial reduction in the original stimulus bill in order to achieve passage. The New York Times reported in 2009 "The package of spending increases and tax relief, intended to spur an economic recovery and create jobs by putting money back in the pockets of consumers and companies, ended up smaller than either the House or Senate had proposed. Many Democrats would have preferred a larger bill, but agreed to pare back, including cuts to favored education and health programs, to win three crucial Republican votes in the Senate." The stimulus was nowhere near large enough to combat the "Great Recession" or unemployment therefore the GOP was successful at keeping unemployment numbers high. However, just blocking legislation was nowhere near enough. With the Tea Party blessing in 2010 they then changed the discussion and created a false problem: The Deficit.

Step Three: Change the Agenda
As soon as the Tea Party members of both the House and the Senate took office in 2010 they began to chant Deficit Reduction. At this time unemployment was still record high, and instead of focusing on jobs they instead focused like a laser beam on deficit reduction. The Fiscal Times reported in January of 2011 that "And that’s just for starters. With the arrival of an army of hard-charging conservative freshmen House and Senate members – many who rode to victory under the Tea Party banner of deficit reduction and tax cuts – GOP leaders are being prodded to challenge the status quo by shredding the president’s budget and downsizing government." This agenda shifting caused the deficit showdown ultimately causing the downgrade of the United States as reported by the Washington Post on August 5, 2011 "Lowering the nation’s rating to one notch below AAA, the credit rating company said “political brinkmanship” in the debate over the debt had made the U.S. government’s ability to manage its finances “less stable, less effective and less predictable.”

In the midst of record high unemployment it is clear the the GOP had a cohesive strategy; keep those numbers high so President Obama would loose the 2012 election. It blocked legislation that would have helped ease unemployment and then changed the agenda so that "deficit reduction" became the main talking point. The added bonus from this self-made distraction was an even shakier economy that would further increase those unemployment numbers.

Will Mitch McConnell succeed in making Obama a one term President? I can't predict the future, I can only report the facts. This I do know; the American people have surely lost as the GOP relentlessly pursues its goal!

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/07/15/can-a-president-be-reelected-with-9-unemployment/

http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/republican-leader-says-gop-s-number-one-goal-is-defeating-obama-2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/us/politics/12stimulus.html

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/01/03/The-New-Congress-Deficit-Reduction-at-All-Costs.aspx#page1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sandp-considering-first-downgrade-of-us-credit-rating/2011/08/05/gIQAqKeIxI_story.html