Ouch: Larry Kudlow Thinks Economy May Actually Be on Mend, With 2-3% Annualized Growth In Last Two Quarters of This Year

Kudlow is a famously an economic optimist (under all presidents of all parties), so bear that bias in mind.

But he is a bona fide economist and professional smart-guy, so he has me worried a bit about the coming of my long-feared nightmare scenario -- Obama sabotages the economy, but not quite enough that the public realizes it, and rewards him for his sabotage.

Truth be told, respected economists like Donald Marron, Keith Hennessey, Bruce Bartlett, and Kevin Hassett have all carefully chronicled the fact that the Obama stimulus package does not feature any real fiscal multipliers. They say the bulk of the package consists of transfer payments to individuals and states, along with tax credits that will produce no real incentive effects to spur economic growth.

But the fact remains that numerous signs are now pointing to economic recovery. And the GOP needs to craft a smart political response to this. Obama and Biden will surely take credit for the better economic news, just as any White House would. It's the way the political game is played. But Republicans have to play the game, too.

...

Sen. DeMint told me during our interview that the economy is getting better mainly because of the corrective forces of free-market capitalism in the private free-enterprise sector, and not from all this government spending and borrowing. Abstracting from the Fed's big stimulus effort, he's right.

But the White House is going to take credit for economic recovery anyway, and that's the newest political challenge for the GOP.

Good point, I think. The GOP cannot afford to leave things purely to chance and put all their eggs in the economic-decline basket. True, messages mean very little, and it's facts on the ground that matter, but it can't hurt to fashion messages that emphasize the stuff that the vagaries of the economy can't and won't change (such as the exploding deficits).

It's Not Just the Unemployment, It's That Obama Misrepresented Himself to a Public Now Feeling Burned and Conned: Jennifer Rubin writes it's not merely the unemployment numbers dragging Obama down, but his dishonest pose as a moderate when he is, was, and always will be a hard liberal. ("Leftist" at heart, I suppose, but constrained by the facts of life in America to merely be a hard liberal.)

posted by Ace at 04:28 PM

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