Republican were unable to disguise their glee at yesterday’s poor job numbers. They’ve been working to undermine the economy for months, and they must see it as a great success that the recovery is now fizzling out.

I know, I know — both sides always want to blame the other for bad news. But the fact is, one side tried to do something to strengthen the recovery and the other didn’t. Remember when President Obama proposed the American Jobs Act? It would have created between 1 and 2 million jobs, reducing unemployment by as much as a full percentage point. Republicans in Congress killed it.

Why did they do it? Because they’re perfectly willing to sacrifice the economy and millions of Americans’ well-being to knock Barack Obama out of office. Their strategy is working, too. In all the commentary on the deflating recovery, virtually no news outlet saw fit to mention that Obama and the Democrats had pushed for the creation of 2 million more jobs. 

Obama proposed a whole series of ideas that independent economists said could create as many as two million jobs. Republicans filibustered virtually all of them, refusing to allow a majority vote on them in the Senate, even on ideas Republicans previously supported as legitimate job-creation measures, such as more investment in the nation’s infrastructure. Yet today’s news is being discussed almost entirely in terms of what it says about the President, as if Republicans have had no role whatsoever in the events of the past few years. [Greg Sargent, emphasis added]

It’s the successful culmination of years of economic sabotage by the GOP. They’re the big winners, but Barack Obama isn’t the biggest loser. The biggest losers are the millions of Americans who are unemployed or unable to make ends meet. Republicans have sacrificed millions of Americans’ well-being to achieve their goal of defeating President Obama.

Mitt Romney is running on his record as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital. At the same time, though, he’s screeching that it’s somehow out of bounds for Barack Obama to point out that his record consisted largely of reaping profits for super-rich investors by laying off workers. In a further contortion, while it’s apparently beyond the pale for Obama to discuss Romney’s record, the Romney campaign is advancing a demonstrable lie about Obama’s record:

Mitt Romney’s campaign events and the firepower of American Crossroads will both focus this week on President Barack Obama’s jobs record as a way to fight off charges about the Republican candidate’s private-sector experience, with a Romney aide attacking the stimulus as “the mother of all earmarks.”…

A senior campaign aide said Romney will argue that Obama has actually subtracted jobs…

But he hasn’t. That’s just another one of the countless lies Romney has built his campaign around. The facts are the facts. Obama reversed the plummeting economy that he inherited, and there are now more jobs than at the beginning of his presidency. 

One would think the facts would count for something, but they don’t. Our lapdog media has dutifully reported Romney’s latest lie, just as they have dutifully reported all of his lies with virtually no scrutiny, and just as they dutifully reported his outrageous assertion that his business record should somehow be off limits for Obama.

So here’s the truth you won’t read in the legacy media. The numbers clearly show that we have had significant job growth under Barack Obama. Mitt Romney doesn’t know how to create jobs, he only knows how to create profits for the super-rich. His proposals for the economy would give billions to the rich while slashing government programs that benefit the rest of us. That’s exactly what leveled our economy in the first place.

Everybody knows that Barack Obama is the spendingest President in history. Everybody knows that the Federal government under his watch has grown to a colossal, nearly incomprehensible size, crushing us with a mountain of debt. That’s simply common knowledge.

The problem is, the “common knowledge” is dead wrong:

Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

What makes this so painful is that Obama is going to suffer doubly when it comes to the politics of spending and the economy. Since everybody “knows” that Obama is a profligate spender, voters will punish him for that, even though it’s not true. At the same time, since he hasn’t spent enough to stimulate the economy, voters will punish him for that, too.

If only Obama and the Democrats had spent more when they had the chance. Since they’re going to be cast as spendthrifts anyway, it sure would be nice to have the economic growth that spending would have stimulated.

Who is Barack Obama? He’s a practicing Muslim who pals around with terrorists. He was born in Kenya and his birth certificate is an elaborate conspiracy. He’s a socialist who has presided over the largest expansion of government since the New Deal, with soaring taxes and exploding deficits to match.

These are all lies the Tea Party tells about Barack Obama. The trouble is, only the first two are treated as the lunatic conspiracy theories they are, even though the facts disprove all three. The fact is that spending, taxes, and the deficit are all lower today than when Obama took office.

I know the Tea Party Republicans hate Barack Obama, and nobody is going to change that. But it doesn’t matter if they feel like taxes and spending are going up; the fact is, they aren’t. That’s just one more way the Tea Party tries to rationalize their baseless hatred for our president.

What’s really sad is that our economy would be better off if Obama would actually do the things the Tea Party Republicans accuse him of. More government spending is just what we need right now. And since everyone seems convinced that Obama’s a big spender, it would be nice if he would actually push for higher spending. Right now, he has the dual disadvantage of being blamed for high spending, without the economic benefits of actually doing said spending.

Yesterday, Barack Obama continued his “evolution” on gay marriage, which has always been his way of saying that he supports equality but doesn’t want to say so for political reasons. He took a big step yesterday, but not a big enough one:

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states’ deciding the issue on their own. But he said he’s confident that more Americans will grow comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married, citing his own daughters’ comfort with the concept.

I guess I should be happy he’s taken even this step, but I’m tired of settling for “good enough.” I’m tired of Democrats playing cynical political games, trying to follow the polls, and always behaving as if they need to trick Americans into voting for them. I want leaders with the courage to stand up for their convictions and convince the American people that they’re right.

Instead, Obama waited to “evolve” until the polls showed a slight majority in favor of equality. Even worse, he’s still partially ducking the issue, saying it should be up to the individual states whether to make gays and lesbians second-class citizens.

We have an obligation as a nation to extend equal rights to all our citizens. We should never hold a vote on which groups of Americans are deserving of full citizenship and which are not. If the president truly supports equal marriage, he needs to go farther than saying that he supports it personally but is totally fine with individual states denying their citizens equal rights. This is too important an issue for that cop-out.

Barack Obama showed yesterday that he’ll be drawing strong contrasts between his budget proposal and the Romney/Ryan plan. To that end, the White House released an infographic yesterday showing just what you could buy with Paul Ryan’s proposed tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. Suffice it to say that it’s clear who’s looking out for the middle class.

I’ve written a few times that despite Republicans’ most fervent wishes, the 2012 Republican primary has little in common with the 2008 Democratic primary that helped shape Barack Obama as a candidate. As the 2012 primary slogs on, though, one similarly has emerged — a string of minor victories for the runner-up that manage to prolong the primary.

In 2008, Barack Obama proved unable to win primaries in the largest states, such as Texas and Pennsylvania. In 2012, Mitt Romney has proved unable to win in conservative southern states, such as Louisiana, where Rick Santorum won this weekend’s primary.

Just like in 2008, Romney’s defeats are practically meaningless. Mathematically, Romney is on track to become the nominee despite Santorum’s occasional wins. What’s more, his losses have no predictive power for the general election. So Romney’s couldn’t win in Louisiana. Does anyone believe that means the state will vote or Obama in the general election? That’s just as unlikely as Pennsylvania voting for McCain in 2008.

The simple truth is that the primary is over, and Mitt Romney is the winner. But because of Santorum’s occasional victories, Romney can’t seem to bring everyone else around to that conclusion. This is something he desperately needs to do, because the primary has done enormous damage to his campaign.

How long will it be before Romney finally manages to put the primary to rest for good? Romney had better hope he wraps things up quicker than Obama did — especially since his opponent is so much weaker.