Every Republican Candidate is Campaigning Against the Year 2008

Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 01:44 pm

It is almost as if the past seven years have gone by without Republicans noticing. They are all carrying on about the need to create jobs. To restore the economy. It doesn’t matter who you listen to. It’s Pete and repeat.

Just the other day in Phoenix, Trump said,

“Mexico — I respect the country. They’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our manufacturing, they’re taking our money, they’re taking everything, and they’re killing us at the border.”

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He has said the same thing about China, that it is a “country that is ripping our heart out… And we [U.S.] do nothing to protect ourselves.”

Yet his own clothes line, as David Letterman pointed out, is made in Mexico and China. Donald Trump stole those jobs, gift-wrapped them, and personally shipped them overseas.

And then blamed Obama.

Take any Republican you wish and listen to them on the American economy. You will find that they are ignoring that in March, we had the lowest unemployment rate in seven years, ignoring not just 63 consecutive months of job growth, but now, 64 straight months, and the addition of 12.8 million jobs (since the ACA was passed, 90 percent of them full-time).

Republicans go on about how bad the economy is, despite Obama’s accomplishment of giving America the fastest GDP growth rate in more than a decade, a booming Wall Street, and the fact that, as of February, Obama had cut the deficit by two-thirds. The deficit shrank to a five-year low in 2013, and a year later, the deficit as a percentage of GDP fell below the 40-year average.

Think about that: FORTY year average. Forty years will take you back to the mid-1970s.

You would never know from listening to Republican presidential hopefuls that, as Rachel Maddow pointed out in 2013, we were witness to the fasted deficit reduction since the end of World War II, and that the deficit continues to shrink.

In December, the United States reached its highest growth level in 11 years, five percent in the third quarter. Eleven years, going back to 2003. Have Republicans noticed this?

If they’ve noticed, they steadfastly ignore it. We already touched on Trump above. Jeb Bush wrote a few days ago that “Barack Obama’s policies have given us a zombie economy where no matter what else happens, most Americans are falling behind.”

Just the other day, everybody noticed Jeb Bush say Americans need to work longer hours. Did anyone notice him say, “My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4% growth as far as the eye can see”?

Reagan’s average was 3.5 percent. Clinton managed 4 percent for four years. The United States has never seen a constant growth rate of 4 percent. It has averaged 3.24 percent from 1948 until 2015.

Just to put things in perspective, average growth rate under George W. Bush was a dismal 1.6 percent (dead last since Eisenhower) while Obama in the last year of his first term managed 2.8 percent in 2012, and began his second term with 1.9 percent in 2013, despite the Bush-engineered economic collapse of 2008.

The fact is, it is difficult to understand where Jeb’s problem with productivity comes from, since, as Newsweek has pointed out, “Under Bush, American workers put in an average of 34.6 hours of work a week. Under Obama, they worked an average of 34.3 hours a week.”

I guess Jeb thinks we’re being 3 minutes and 36 seconds lazy. But it wasn’t unproductive American workers who destroyed America’s economy. It was Jeb’s brother. And Jeb’s party.

Here’s the rub: The world the Republicans are campaigning against doesn’t exist. It hasn’t existed since 2008. In 2013, again, during Obama’s presidency, S&P affirmed America’s AA+ rating and upgraded America’s credit outlook from negative to stable, after being downgraded in 2011 as a result of the Great Recession of 2008. S&P cited “deficit reduction” and reduced borrowing as the reasons.

In other words, though they use Obama’s name, they are campaigning against George W. Bush.

Not to put too fine a point upon it, everything they say needs to be addressed, has been addressed, and with no help from them. Everything the GOP has done since 2008 has either created no jobs at all, or actually cost America jobs, has not reduced the deficit at all, but added to the deficit through tax breaks for the rich.

Apparently, having said that Obama would destroy the economy means that despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama has destroyed the economy, and that they are therefore in the position of being saviors. But this is cognitive dissonance rearing its ugly head.

A Republican inability to deal with facts does not point to them as the best people to lead. It is the Republican inability to deal with facts that got us into the mess we were in by 2008. And arguably, their tendency to say things that make them feel better about themselves has gotten worse over the past seven years.

This is just more evidence of a complete lack of ethics and a complete disregard of the facts in the Republican Party.

Where Trump is concerned, he asserted in Phoenix that he is a “really smart person,” yet claims of his 4,000-strong rally “This crowd today blows away anything that Bernie Sanders has gotten,” even though Sanders got 10,000 in Madison. I’m not a rich business man, but I know 10,000 is more than 4,000. Bombastically claiming 20,000 for a building that holds 4,000 isn’t a sign that we can trust anything Trump says.

While the Republican Party shrinks into a small-tent, regional cult, he claimed “The silent majority is back, and we’re going to take the majority back, and we are going to make America great again.” Politico points out that for his supporters, “Trump is a straight-talker.”

Being loud and opinionated doesn’t make you a straight-talker. Republicans must learn not to conflate the two. To be a straight-talker, you must remain cognizant of the facts. What Trump is, in fact, is what is called in the vernacular, a “bullshitter.” There is a difference.

And you can tell them apart by looking at the numbers. The Republican base is too lost to ideology and bigotry to notice facts, but they’re out there, they do matter, and the America their candidates are campaigning against no more exists than the country they say they want to take back ever existed.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.