Fox News Blames Stock Market Ills On (You Guessed It) Barack Obama

The stock market is still in turmoil. So who is to blame?

If you’re a financial expert, a typical American, or an economist you’d stand back and point to a bunch of factors, which would include putting some but not all of the blame on the current President.

If you’re purely partisan Democrat you’d will blame it totally, completely, entirely on George Bush – the guy who’s still sitting in the White House running an administration comprised of members of the Republican party.

But if you’re Fox News, you would blame it on….Barack Obama…who hasn’t spent a minute in office yet. In fact, you’d blame it on just THE THOUGHT of Barack Obama in office.

Is that a stretch? No. Read THIS.

It’s not surprising.

Since Obama’s election on Tuesday, conservative talk radio has made it clear that Obama will not get a second’s honeymoon — not even under the guise of observing a week’s cease fire in the politics of demonization that has come to so characterize the way many in the GOP feel they need to make their case. Rather than present affirmative policies, alternative solutions and argue in favor of them you can boil down what some feel they need to do in discussing politics in two words: discredit someone.

There is a precedent for this new claim of blaming ills on someone who cannot even order the Fed to send him a paperclip at this point.

For the first part of Bush’s term if there were financial problems on the horizon they were blamed on “the Clinton recession.” And during his term if there were criticisms aimed at the Bush administration the most common answer was “but under Clinton!” I wrote this guest post on the HP about that mantra.

Right now it’s quite clear, reading the linked post above and listening to a variety of talk radio shows, how it’s going to go.

The campaign for 2012 has already begun. Eve before Obama — someone who got the votes of a lot of Republicans as well as Democrats — sets foot in the White House to meet George Bush for a cup of coffee, he’s being demonized.

The bottom line is that Fox News has no proof to offer — no polls of stockbrokers, no quotes from investors, no studies, not one single shred — that the stock market drop is due to Obama.

It isn’t analysis — it’s a partisan lashing out at a time when many Americans of many ages, races, and many in both political parties (and particularly independent voters) would like to give it a REST — at least until the guy is sworn in.

OK?