"doubling down" on dumbassery

Bush's brain Karl Rove had an idea to "take advantage" of Obama's call for more economic stimulus:

The first, $862 billion stimulus bill of 17 months ago has after all failed to work the president's promised magic.

Many of us were arguing at the time that the stimulus was too small, but it still had large positive effects. (Rove, please read the CBO report if you'd like to learn more.)

Nancy Pelosi joined the president in his bad bet by offering up the economic gem that extension of unemployment benefits "creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name." Really? Faster than, say, cutting personal income tax cuts or slashing the corporate tax rate?

If I were Rove, I'd be embarrassed to not know about the multiplier effect of economic stimulus. Didn't they teach Econ 101 back in his era?

A GOP growth agenda would keep intact the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Actually, this should read "GOP [deficit] growth agenda," as I mentioned previously.

A jobs, growth and prosperity agenda is a natural complement to austerity policies.

Sure, if by "complement" you mean "opposite."

Obama's brand of liberalism has given Republicans the opportunity to make a confident and bold case for conservatism.

By "confident and bold," Rove apparently means "mendacious and mistake-ridden."

Steve Benen points out the obvious idiocy in Rove's argument--which will be overlooked by wingnut ideologues. "Karl Rove's 'jobs and prosperity' agenda encourages Republicans to, quite literally, support the Bush/Cheney 'jobs and prosperity' agenda from the last decade:"

Look, I realize that Rove isn't the sharpest crayon in the box, but his advice to the GOP is so ridiculous on its face, I'm hard pressed to imagine why the Wall Street Journal published it. His argument is that the Bush/Cheney policies that already failed spectacularly might work if we just try them again. [...]

Republicans will win, Rove concludes, if they just tell voters we should go back to the policies we already know don't work. Bush failed miserably, but if we just give his painful failures one more try, everything will work out fine.

Honestly, maybe Karl Rove is just some kind of performance artist, hoping to make Republican pundits look foolish. It would make more sense than Rove actually believing this nonsense.