President Snyder? Alas, President Granholm

In exit polls last Tuesday, voters bought the Obama & Media sales pitch and blamed George Bush for the worst economic recovery since WW2. On Wednesday, voters woke up to the reality that the blame rests squarely with Barack Obama.

The stock market tanked on news that Obama was re-elected, meaning four more years of fiscal cliffs, budget chaos, job-stifling Obamacare regulations, and debt downgrades. In short, Jennifer Granholm’s second term. Had Mitt Romney been elected, all of these ills would have been addressed – just as his political twin, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, immediately got down to business in Lansing with a GOP legislature in 2010.

Most immediately looms the fiscal cliff, a crisis created by Obama for the 2012 campaign.

In 2011, with Congress and Obama deadlocked over spending cuts and tax hikes, Speaker Boehner’s GOP House offered a compromise: Tax reform that would goose growth with lower rates while closing loopholes to bring in more revenue (upon entering office, Guv Snyder’s similar tax reform immediately encouraged the financial markets about Michigan’s future).

Obama, as described in Bob Woodward’s book and press accounts, rejected the deal in order to tee up his divisive, class warfare campaign against Republicans (and their likely nominee, Mitt Romney) in 2012. In short, Obama abdicated economic leadership for re-election.

Now the campaign is over. Boehner put the same deal back on the table last week. But unlike Michigan in 2010, the voters elected no change in the executive office. It’s deja vu all over again.