Pirate's Cove

The Politico’s CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN and SEUNG MIN KIM have a breathless piece up featuring that headline, minus the “bummer.” They opine

President Barack Obama’s embrace of same-sex marriage was viewed for so long as such a risky move that operatives in both parties expected it to drop like a bomb, handing Republicans a powerful wedge issue in an election year.

Instead, it’s landed like a feather.

Top Republican officeholders went out of their way Thursday to try to shift the conversation back to the economy. The GOP’s House and Senate campaign committees practically ignored it. And prominent Republican strategists are warning the party to steer clear of it.

The early calculation by Republicans is that it’s not worth diverting attention from the economy, which remains Obama’s biggest weakness, and that an intense focus on gay marriage may actually further alienate women and younger voters who were turned off by the GOP’s focus earlier this year on limiting access to birth control.

“This election is all about jobs, the economy, spending and the debt,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who advised former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign. “The president’s decision is not going to change that fundamental foundation. It might make a difference at the margins, especially in culturally conservative states and among cultural conservatives. But it just is not where voters are.”

In other words, the GOP just doesn’t care about the issue. Like Obama, they probably feel like it is a State’s rights issue. And they plan on focusing on the economy. Gay marriage will not take this country off a cliff ala Greece. But, they economic policies of the Obama admin. will.

“Every house I have knocked on, it is about jobs and spending,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) said. “And you know what? That’s our goal. And so we want to do what the people are telling us to do … cut spending, get our budget under control and create jobs. That’s it.”

Somehow, I think the article fell apart after they wrote the headline. Perhaps the headline was written by someone else after the story was written, because it’s not so much the sound of silence, but simply that the GOP could care less that Obama cynically changed his position in order to attempt to fire up his base and, more importantly, increase his campaign donations.

Republicans are wise to ignore Obama’s pandering, despite the angst of some social conservatives, as pointed later out in the article. A different Politico article provides this information

Just 22 percent of Americans said that the economy has improved in the past month, down from the 28 percent who said so in February, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.

Meanwhile, 35 percent predict that the unemployment rate, which has been slowly dropping, will start going back up, up from 30 percent who believed that in February.

Fewer than one in three Americans believe their household’s economic condition will improve in the next year, down from 37 percent just three months ago, while 18 percent believe their finances will deteriorate, up from 11 percent in February.

That’s the fallout from the Obama economy. He can play the “it’s someone and/or something else’s fault” game all day long, yet, at the end of the day, he’s still POTUS, and has been for over three years. His sycophants can Blame Bush, say Obama inherented the economy all they want: at the end of the day, it’s been the Obama policies which have not only failed, but made things worse. The recession officially ended in June 2009, before most of the Obama policies, and especially the Stimulus, kicked in. And here we are with bad economic indicators all around. Mitt Romney and the GOP would be wise to stay out of the social and sidebar issues that Democrats want to drag them in to and focus on issues that really matter.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.