By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet
Across the #GOP, there’s been an outbreak of claims by party leaders and presidential candidates that Republicans deserve credit for a slow-but-steady economic recovery, and that the GOP is the emerging champion of still-struggling working Americans.
Both of these assertions are brazen falsehoods.The first of these claims, by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is the latest effort to dilute the White House’s achievements; while the second—by likely 2016 candidates including Florida’s ex-Gov. Jeb Bush—is another variety of political theft, all but plagiarizing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA.
Other GOP presidential aspirants have been saying this as well—citing the nation’s economic malaise before their party’s new congressional leadership shifted gears and decided that it now wants some credit for the latest economic recovery statistics.
Republicans like McConnell seem to believe their claims of credit for a growing sense that the economy is recovering will sway an unobservent public. They betting that people will not recall that in 2013 the GOP-led the effort to undermine the government’s credit rating and forced a federal government shutdown that damaged the economy. That came after years of criticizing almost everything that the Obama White House tried to do to shift economic policy, from bailing out Detroit automakers to implementing Obamacare.
“The uptick appears ro coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama administration’s long tenure in Washington: the expectation of a new Republican Congress,” McConnell said, reciting his new script.
