From the first Morning Jolt of 2011 . . .
The Kaine Monotony
Yesterday on CNN’s State of the Union, guest host Ed Henry pressed Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine on why President Obama had not successfully reduced the unemployment rate during his first two years in office. Kaine’s answer hemmed and hawed and meandered here and there in the manner of the Mississippi River, but it offered enough excuses to set up a headline at The Blaze declaring: “DNC Chair Kaine Admits Obama Was Too Busy With Wars and Obamacare to Care About American Jobs.” Er, not in those particular words, exactly, but you can watch the video to judge for yourself.
Jim Hoft yawns: “Of course, this comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been following this regime the past two years . . . DNC Chairman Tim Kaine admitted that Barack Obama was too busy with ‘wars and Obamacare’ to care about jobs.”
“. . . and golfing, vacationing, snuffing out American exceptionalism etc.,” adds Weasel Zippers.
At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey takes issue with two of Kaine’s other lines: “‘He stopped one of them’? Actually, that was George Bush who ‘stopped’ the war in Iraq, thanks to the surge strategy that Obama opposed and repeatedly assailed in public . . . until it worked. It was Bush that signed the Status of Forces Agreement with the Nouri al-Maliki government, which Obama has wisely chosen to follow rather than implement the 16-month withdrawal he demanded as a candidate on the campaign trail. You’ll notice that Obama has been in office 24 months, and that we still have tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, don’t you, Governor Kaine? Bush ‘stopped’ the war in Iraq by winning it. On jobs, Kaine wants to argue that ObamaCare has been a net job creator as well as a significant deficit reducer. Thanks to the doc-fix legislation passed this year, the latter claim is now defunct. I’d also love to see the actual dynamic analysis as to how many actual jobs — outside of government — ObamaCare has produced, and then we can compare that to the drag on private-sector job creation it has caused with its additional cost burdens and uncertainties.”
Also breaking yesterday was word that Kaine is sticking around as DNC chair: “Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine said Sunday that he plans to stay at the helm of the national party another two years because that’s where President Obama wants him to serve.
“‘My agreement with the president is I was going to do what he wants me to do,’ Kaine said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ ‘And what I know sitting here today is he wants me to continue in this spot and that’s what I’m going to do with excitement, you know, traveling all around the country, going through the TSA lines like everybody else, going out and being the president’s advocate and promoter. And it’s a wonderful job and I intend continue it.’”
This is a small miracle for Republicans. Of course, you can’t lay all of Democrats’ woes for the past two years at the feet of Kaine, but he spent most of 2009 being pilloried for failing to finish his day job as governor of Virginia, and it seems pretty clear that Kaine’s full-time focus wasn’t the big plus the committee was looking for. How, exactly, would Tim Kaine handle an end-of-the-year review at any other organization? “Sure, on my watch, we lost six Senate seats, 63 House seats, six governorships, roughly 680 state legislative seats and since the election, 25 of our guys have flipped to join the other side. But think about how much better I’ll be at this job now that I have two years of experience!”