Cokie Roberts, Please Provide One Example of a Republican Who Wants Economy to Get Worse

On NPR’s Morning Edition recently, senior news analyst Cokie Roberts told host Renee Montagne that President Barack Obama had sent “signals” to the debt supercommittee in support of a deal–even though he was on his way out of the country at a critical time.

For weeks, Democrats had predicted–and hoped–that the supercommittee would fail, so that President Obama could continue his attempt to win a second term by running a Harry Truman-style campaign against a “do-nothing Congress” (even though his party controls the upper chamber).

Roberts suggested that a deal might be possible, because just as Democrats were starting to realize their scare tactics on Medicare and entitlement programs could backfire, Republicans who want the economy to fail are starting to worry that they would bear the blame (audio at 2:22):

Republicans who might have wanted to keep the economy bad to skewer the Democrats are now worried it could affect them and it could affect some of their key constituents, and they’re not so sanguine about letting it get worse. And Democrats who wanted to just, sort of demagogue against Republicans on Medicare cuts are worried it might all backfire.

Robert’s claim relied on a false equivalence–not only because Democrats have no intention of backing off their “Mediscare” tactics, but because there is not a single congressional Republican who wants the economy to fail.

I invite Ms. Roberts to provide even one example of a Republican in Congress who has expressed a desire for the economy to stagnate–as opposed to those who have warned, correctly, that President Obama’s policies are causing it to do so.

The Republican-led House has passed one bill after another to turn our economy around, only to see that legislation wither in the Democrat-controlled Senate, or to hear it distorted and mocked by President Obama himself.

The obstructionism on the debt supercommittee was entirely on the Democrat side–not only because the party of big government wants to re-elect President Obama, but also because it wants to raise taxes, against popular will and economic sense.

President Obama and Democrats have made clear that they are prepared to hurt the American economy, even if doing so will grow the size of government and advance an abstract goal of “fairness.”

That is the main obstacle to progress in the U.S. today–and it is the story that NPR and the mainstream media in general are not interested in telling.