Even liberals are starting to notice that the economic "recovery" President Obama and the media claimed was happening, isn't. So perhaps it's no surprise that Henry Blodget and economics editor Dan Gross of Yahoo! Finance tried to find a way to blame the GOP, rather than the president.
On The Daily Ticker [1], Blodget interviewed Gross who contended that Republicans are "intentionally sabotaging" the economy in order to retake the White House. In the Daily ticker video, the onscreen texts summarized that view saying: "Gross: Republicans Want the Economy to Get Worse."
Gross claimed that every Republican running for the White House, if they were "being honest" would want the economy to be worse off next year before the election. "Then it stands to reason that if you have the ability to have a role in policy that you would engineer policy to get that outcome. That's what political parties do …" Gross said.
Gross then cited conservatives opposed to TARP and the stimulus as examples of "a element" in Congress "that just wants to blow stuff up." According to him, "a significant chunk of the Republican party is willing to do that." Apparently in Gross' mind, a philosophical belief that bailouts and government spending do not improve the economy was illegitimate.
Later Gross even claimed that "we all think that whoever is in power" "should be doing everything they can to goose the economy in the short term" and people agree with that. He should talk to some of the 200 economists [2] who put their names in a full-age New York Times ad opposing the fiscal stimulus program.
And although some polls showed a slight majority of Americans favoring a stimulus package right before it was passed, sentiment has shifted. A Jan. 2010, CNN poll found 56 percent of Americans opposed to stimulus.
Unfortunately, the media have entertained such economic conspiracy theories before. In 2006, CNN's Jack Cafferty cynically said, "You know, if you were a real cynic, you could also wonder if the oil companies might not be pulling the price of gas down to help the Republicans [3] get re-elected in the midterm elections a couple of months away."
In 2008, left-wing radio host Ed Schultz claimed the same thing. On Nov. 12, 2008, Schultz said, "You know what's gonna happen? Gasoline's gonna be a buck 47 ($1.47) when Bush gets out of office. This has just been all so pre-arranged." [4]