Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota) delivered the Republicans' weekly address today centering on President Barack Obama's compulsive campaigning versus doing his actual job. "The president should spend less time campaigning to save the jobs of Democrats in Congress and more time trying to create jobs for the American people," said the potential 2012 presidential candidate. Ordinarily I'd disagree with the idea that the President of the United States can/should create jobs, but this particular president kept promising he would and therefore deserves to be judged on his failure to keep those promises.

Continued...

Very early in his presidency, Mr. Obama forced the $800 billion stimulus bill on the American people claiming it would create/save jobs and keep the national unemployment rate from surging over 8%. That rate is currently 9.6% and has been hovering just under 10% for the past year.

Obamacare was supposed to help build a "new foundation for our economy to create the good, lasting jobs and shared prosperity of tomorrow." (source) Instead the obscenely expensive and hugely unpopular law is a job-killer; increasing the costs of hiring/keeping workers to unsustainable levels for many employers.

Cap & Trade, which hasn't passed yet but is still on the Obama agenda, has been touted as another reform (a.k.a. federal power grab) that would create over a million new "green" jobs. Even if that's true, it would kill over 2 million existing jobs and raise operating costs on virtually every employer thereby killing even more jobs. (source)

Certainly a president who, along with his congressional accomplices, spent trillions of taxpayer dollars (and wants to spend trillions more) on policies he promised would create jobs owns the sky-high unemployment rate that has resulted. At one of his numerous campaign stops last week, the Campaigner-in-Chief said he was so focused on getting the policy right that he didn't devote enough energy to advertising the benefits. (source) But when it comes to jobs, benefits don't need to be advertised - they're either there or they're not.

President Obama used his own weekly address to attack his political opponents for opposing his policies. In short: even more campaigning, zero leadership and another dose of his anti-business job-killing rhetoric.

One of President Obama's frequent campaign lines is, "If you want to move a car forward you put it in 'D' and if you want to move it backward you put it in 'R' - a not so clever reference to Democrats and Republicans.. But as Senator Thune said, "When you’re speeding toward a cliff, you don’t want to keep the car in drive."

Ten more days until the brakes are firmly applied.