by kos
Tue Nov 23, 2010 at 08:33:56 AM PST
Atrios made this point a week ago:
During exchanges on the twitter, it occurred to me that even Republican challengers didn't for the most part run on the bad economy/unemployment. They ran on issues more separate from peoples' lives (stimulus spending, deficit) and on being the great defenders of Medicare.
It was a surprising point, but one that rings true nonetheless. Republicans might argue that all the deficit hysteria was job-related, but only insofar as they've transferred blame for Wall Street's excesses onto the government for obvious ideological reasons. It turns out that Republicans really didn't run on creating jobs, but on demonizing government efforts to stimulate job growth (the stimulus, auto industry bailouts, TARP, etc). And by the time the votes were cast, even TARP -- a Bush initiative -- belonged to Obama.
So there is no real Republican mandate to create jobs, which is perhaps why they're starting to focus on irrelevant and loser bullshit like this:
As one of its first acts, the new Congress will consider denying citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the United States.
Those children, who are now automatically granted citizenship at birth, will be one of the first targets of the Republican-led House when it convenes in January.
GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, the incoming chairman of the subcommittee that oversees immigration, is expected to push a bill that would deny "birthright citizenship" to such children.
Funny thing, here's what the voters are most concerned with:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/11/23/922566/-Incoming-GOP-House-not-interested-in-jobs