Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of Florida delivered his party's weekly address on Saturday morning, and made a provocative claim about President Obama.
"The bottom line is this president inherited a country with serious problems," Rubio said. "He asked the Congress to give him the stimulus and Obamacare to fix it. The Democrats in Congress gave it to him. And not only did it not work, it made everything worse."
Rubio didn't specify what "everything" includes, which is a shame for a couple of reasons.
The first is that the senator's claim is strongly at odds with Mitt Romney's message. The likely Republican presidential nominee has said, consistently and frequently in recent weeks, that the U.S. economy is improving under President Obama. To be sure, the former governor doesn't believe Obama deserves credit for these developments, but Romney has nevertheless said, over and over again, that the economy is "getting better."
This, in turn, makes Rubio's argument problematic. GOP leaders can argue the economy has gotten better, or they can argue the economy has gotten worse, but they can't argue both at the same time.
The second problem that undermines Rubio's claim is reality, which points in the opposite direction.
Here's a chart, for example, showing private-sector job totals by month since the start of the Great Recession, with red columns showing the months when George W. Bush was president and the blue columns showing the Obama era. The "A" marks where we were when Obama took office, and the "B" marks were we are now.
For Rubio's argument to make sense, Americans would have to believe that "A," when the economy was hemorrhaging jobs, is better than "B," with an economy that's adding hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Here's another chart, showing economic growth by quarter since the start of the recession. Again, the "A" marks where we were when Obama took office, and the "B" marks were we are now.
When Rubio argues the president's agenda "made everything worse," he apparently wants voters to think "A," when the economy was shrinking, is preferable to "B," which points to a growing economy.
Perhaps Rubio wasn't talking about jobs or the economy? It's possible, but it's also unclear what he might have been referring to. The U.S. auto industry was on the verge of collapse, and now it's starting to thrive. Al Qaeda was growing, and now its leadership has been largely decimated. Even the major stock market indexes have seen considerable improvements in recent years.
Marco Rubio doesn't have to like the progress, but he should at least try to tell the truth about it.
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Now Steve. Let's be fair to Rubio. When Obama took office, it was easier to get rich selling short.
These people are STILL getting rich selling short nakedly... It isn't a question of if they are lying. Today's question is which lie to believe...
Rubio's problem, as Stephen Colbert could easily point out, is that reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Too bad for him, eh?
He actually meant to say that the President's agenda "made everything worse...for Republicans!"
There are many topics Sen. Rubio doesn't understand. It might take less ink to discuss the precious few topics he does understand. *nods*
Just another Republican competing against a manufactured Obama, instead of the real one.
Mitt is right. The economy is doing better despite Obama's meddling.
Mitt hasn't been right about anything since he started campaigning for Prez -- in 2006.
The economy is doing better despite Obama's meddling.
LOL, well it was his as you call it meddling that worked as the right/wrong side who didnt even try to help in meddling.
so President Obama administration gets the credit. smiling you know OUR Country is getting better slowly but it could go faster if the Teapubliecants would even care 1/16 for We The People.
I can't begin to tell you how happy I am that you are blogging again, Steve. Withdrawal the last few days has been grim. Never mind the grimness of the news - it is just easier when you put it all in perspective.
A loyal follower! Congratulations on the new gig.
Now, now...Rubio is just pointing out the obvious that under the current GOP leadership in Congress, not a single jobs bill has passed, yet he's mad because even without the GOP bill, the economy has started healing, thus proving that Obama's policies have worked.
i have to agree with joe he is right about this they are just unhappy they can't get any credit for what the President has done and the democratic party has done they don't like the democrats to get credit for anything that is good because it hurts their brand of politics. It's simple one party is all about protecting and make a 2 class system which would be the rich and then the poor this is the way the republicans want it. and then you have democrats who want to bring jobs back form over sea's spend money on the company that are here in america not the one's over sea's. they want to invest in the future of america and they only way to do that is what President Obama wants which means invest in to ED, manufacturing, technology here in the United States of America not china or any other country. and again if they would of just passed the american jobs act he would of created more jobs but that's not what the GOP wants. yes the know President Obama policies work they just want to be racist in some way and stop the first African american President form improving america and go done in history as the president who saved america form being another Rome who held power for along time before they crumbled as a society and country. here is a thing i like to call math. GOP=high function retards or out of touch idiots. Dems=we may not be perfect but at least we care and are trying to do something for the people of America.
Obama's policies???
what policies?
Post #3.1 by contessa61 says Mitt is right. The economy is doing better despite Obama's meddling.
Post #5.2 then says Obama's policies?? what policies?
So apparently when we're trying to argue that the economy is doing good on it's own then we'll admit this is in spite of Obama's economic policies. But when we're trying to argue that the economy is bad we'll profess to not know what economic policies Obama has passed.
If the economy is doing better despite Obama, what do we need Mittens for?
I would love to know some of the non-latino folks in my wonderful state who did vote for this character. How did he get in? What has he done for Florida?
One wonders how much longer the Cons can feed boldfaced lies to their base without doing irreparable damage.
From my point of view that time has past. It is impossible to even listen to these politicians when they lie against provable fact. Is this just to capture the "emotional" vote? It would be very nice if each story like this that is published be passed through a "truthiness" filter. Rubio is particularly dangerous because he is willing to say anything to please his handlers. He thinks he will be the first "Cuban" president.
a) They've already done irreparable damage. The value that the USA could have been producing over the past five years is gone forever. We can never give people their homes back, we can never give people back the educations foregone, etc. And we can never reboot the careers that would have started in better times, leading to a lifetime of greater earnings.
b) As for the lies, it was a Republican who said, 'You can fool some of the people all of the time." The only question is whether that "some of the people" is enough to get elected with the help of the ones who may not be fooled but go along for other reasons.
There are rumblings afoot, something I haven't seen since Bush 43 took office.
These are rumblings for the first time ever, that the Fox News "reality distortion field," not to mention Karl Rove as the arch propagandist with a deep attachment to the "big lie" school of creating a non-reality-based universe, is starting to backfire.
It is starting to look, to some Republicans, like feeding an ignorant, rabid, fire-breathing, bigoted, xenophobic base in order to manipulate them into consistently voting against their own interest could also be a lesson in self-sabotage and self-destruction.
As in, they made this bed, but it may not be around much longer for them to lie in it.
A backlash might be kicking in. Might be kicking in too late to save the GOP.
Here's a bigger question, tho: If Super-PACS and other forms of personal aristocracy-style wealth can spend in a campaign phenomenally more than any of the existing, long-standing political parties can spend (and of course exponentially more than unions and progressive organizations), does that not mean that these new bottomless bank account entities have become DE FACTO POLITICAL PARTIES?!
Weren't political parties first formed to advance a platform and consolidate resources to support said platform? Entrenched things like primary voting (which replaced smoke-filled room caucuses almost everywhere) and party conventions make it sound like a political party is some kind of special, extra-governmental agency.
I just don't see the difference between what these Super-PACs and Super-Rich are doing and the original function of a political party.
And if there is no difference, except that the Super-PACs and the Super-Rich have exponentially more financial resources (and significantly less democratic participation and oversight) than the traditional parties, then maybe for the first time in US history, we have broken out of the oppressive binary of the two-party system!
To the detriment of democracy, however. This seems to be one of the most significant things our new Gilded Age hath wrought.
You are forgetting that nearly all politics is puppet theater, even when there is a true body count as a result of it..
Of course money is power and money rules and the nation runs according to the whims of the moneychangers. The marrionettes are there to give the moneymen the veneer of legitimacy. It is a lie of course, but one that they would be loath to have exposed.
The amazing...astounding really...thing is that when push comes to shove, like with Kasich and Walker, money is not enough to overturn an irrate electorate. The Koch's hand picked puppet of Herman Cain was not able to keep it together, regardless of the resources of his backers.
The only problem is that the system has to sustain grievious damage in order to work properly.
See the Freakenomics authors. They claim studies have disproven any statistical correlation between more money and winning elections (disproving the truism that money buys elections)
What they mean is that it is not automatic. Sometimes most money wins. Other times most money doesn't win. So it can't be referred to as a consistent cause-effect or correlation.
Look at California 2010. Despite the massive amount of their personal wealth invested into their campaigns both Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina were massive failures. A lot of Republican capital went into Steve Cooley's bid for Attorney General and Kamala Harris won. None of them survived the California stink test.
"The stimulus did not work," and "Obama made the economy worse," are two of the biggest lies being told right now. Members of the media who do not call out politicians who repeat this lie are only helping to spread the often repeated lie. Perhaps they are banking on the belief that if enough people hear the lie, some of them will begin to believe it.
When have facts or truths ever stopped politicians from telling lies? It is become an acute problem with Republicans. And the lies they tell are whoppers because they know it will be on Fox News.
fox/saudi/propaganda entertainment news home of the Whoppers!
Charts is charts Apparently Mr. Rubio can not read them
Couple that with "Obama asked Congress for the stimulus..." My recollection was that the stimulus was proposed by Bush 43, and that Obama continued the emphasis on the need for federal funds. Most conservatives forget that even the Bush administration acknowledged that when an economic disaster reaches epic proportions, there are few independent sources of recovery large enough to correct the mistakes (which were, after all, partly encouraged by the lack of federal regulation).
Now, now "the Rube" is doing what the GOP does best living in an alternative reality where the sheeple don't ask real questions......
The only manufacturing the Republicans promote is the manufacturing of projects to promote their own interests and bank accounts and the imaginary Obama they are running against. Reality never enters into any of it and facts are ignored as well as the duties of the offices they were voted into-
In Republican land, the Obama initiatives have all failed simply because they say they failed! Rubio is merely expressing a doubled down narrative the Republicans have to rely upon - they got nothing besides the Obama has trashed American meme, so that's what their echo chamber is reinforcing daily, hourly, and minutely!
The shear dissonance of it all . . . . hurts my brain!
We can only hope common sense will prevail this next November, and common sense would dictate voting the death of the Republican party and all its retrograde ideas of just what America ought to be! -Kevo
The sad reality is no matter how many fact-checking, charts, sites or sources you give to these crowd right now will not matter much. The Republican constituents choose to put their blinder on and throw away the blind canes, but they are NOT blind. There is a huge difference between the two.
You and your silly logic!
Oh Rachel, you and your cute little charts and girly whatnots
Kevin, the GUY that wrote this post it named Steve Benett. Please try and follow along! I know charts can be confusing.
Steve Benen
Darn auto correct!
Baffled by the last comment:
"Marco Rubio doesn't have to like the progress, but he should at least try to tell the truth"
That would be conduct unbecoming Marco Rubio
He should be made to issue a very public retraction. Blatant lies from anyone in a position of power and trust are unnacceptable. And if he believes the garbage spewing from his mouth, then he should be commited to a psychiatric facility.
Rubio flat out lies. He was caught just months ago making the disingenuous claim about his parents immigration history. Have we seen his long form birth certificate, btw?
Great to see you blogging here Steve. Good post, as always. It is interesting that you find the republicans as dishonest here as you did at The Monthly.
Republicans are so quick with their bashing of President Obama that is is all just reflexive now. The attacks are just mindless rhetoric totally disconnected from the reality that every other American can see. This sort of nonsense from prominent Republicans is an embarrassment to the party and proves how inept these idiots are and wholly unqualified to lead. If they can't read basic economic charts, how are they supposed to govern the country? http://www.sunstateactivist.org
Mr Rubio is a joke. Twisting the facts to make Obama look bad. Much like his buddy Mr. Boenher.. or is it Boner? I cringe when I hear him say all the job bills the House has passed, and how the House has done it's job. Right.. and that's why they're at an 8% approval rating. Clearly a man that is in complete denial and out of touch with America's problems. Back to Rubio... he's just after that VP job and will say anything hoping the GOP notices.
Whew! I thought I was going to lose my daily doses of Steve Benen. GLad to see you posting again...and in new digs. Now I can check out Maddow while I'm reading Steve...that just sounds wrong.
I too have had withdrawal. Sometimes when Im busy its been just Benen all day. so glad you are back and with the added bonus of Rachel. Thanks and congrats
Since we've been adding jobs for more than twenty straight months, but Rubio still thinks that "everything is worse", if he thinks that negative job growth would be good for the economy.
There was also that time back before the 2010 elections when he tried to say "you know why my plan will work? Rachel Maddow thinks it won't." So it's entirely possible that he thinks that piling onto the deficit and hemorrhaging jobs is a good thing.
Always remember the right-wing mantra. "If you say something loud enough and often enough, people will believe it." This applies to EVERY issue. The problem we as liberals have is we think people are persuaded by facts. Unfortunately that is not the case
to all the troll and borderline trolls and to the few very few that are some what interested in the good of the people and country.
here is some what has President Obama done. well if you really want to know just open your eyes and look and be honest with your self's, you will see its going ahead slowly but steady at this point could be better much better if maybe the house had a real leader and the senate minority leader would at lease show some concert for America. if that happen we be well on our way back to prosperity.