Salon: Republicans know whom to blame for the world's problems -- no matter when they started

Let's make it all Obama's fault

Republicans know whom to blame for the world's problems -- no matter when they started

By Mike Madden

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/10/02/blame_obama/

Oct. 2, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- The list of Republican complaints against President Obama is, by now, fairly long. He's leading the country into socialism. He's doing too many things at once. He's not bipartisan enough. He's an enemy of humanity. And, of course, he bailed out Wall Street and the auto manufacturers late last year.

If that last item sounds a little odd, you may have been paying more attention to recent history than some GOP lawmakers have. Republicans have gotten so carried away lately with objecting to whatever the White House is up to that their rhetoric has sometimes seemed to be tinkering with the past. Though the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the Detroit bailout were both started by the Bush administration before Obama took office, the GOP is happy to lump those policies in with other gripes if it means voters grumble more. And policy problems Obama inherited when he took office are slowly, but surely, being transformed into his fault.

"We may be one more bailout away, one more so-called reform away, from losing our way as a nation of the people for the people and by the people," Senate GOP boss Mitch McConnell told like-minded conservatives at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit a couple of weeks ago. He hinted that he knew the real facts, but papered them over pretty quickly: "These worries have been building for a long time, even before last year's election, but they reached a new level in recent months."

Other Republicans have sought to roll back TARP and end the assistance to G.M. and Chrysler -- both policies that began under Bush. (Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby actually blamed Obama explicitly for TARP over the summer.) Speaking at the same conference as McConnell recently, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota started talking about some nefarious, if nebulous, concept known as "bailout nation." Citing the work of an (unnamed) economist from Arizona State University, Bachmann said Obama was up to no good. "Prior to the inception of bailout nation -- in other words, less than one year ago -- 100 percent of private business profits were private. But since the inception of bailout nation ... with all the government takeovers -- the current mentality that rules Washington, D.C. -- 30 percent of private business profits are now owned or controlled by the federal government."