Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin blames the reported drop in GDP on cuts in military and defense spending. “We are preparing to decimate national security, at a cost of perhaps 1.2 million jobs,” she says in her column.

But wait. Government doesn’t create jobs? Mitt Romney said it. Eric Cantor said it. So did Senator Kelly Ayotte (“It’s not the government that’s going to create jobs in this country, it’s our small businesses, it’s the private sector.”) and Senator Jon Kyle . (“Faced with the reality of historic unemployment rates and record federal debt, I had hoped that President Obama, by now, would understand that even more government spending doesn’t create jobs.”) and a lot more.

Many leading Republicans have claimed this as the essential argument for cutting to create growth. Austerity. So if that’s the case, didn’t she just make herself a pariah of the G.O.P?

No. Many of the same Conservatives, Republicans and the business community since early last year have argued against defense cuts and reduced spending on the military, particularly from the sequestration, for the very same reason. Reducing government spending will reduce jobs. In fact, quotes from the same people when sequestration looked like it could be a reality…

Ayotte:
“So we’re not just talking about the jobs issue, which is, of course, of concern to anyone who serves in Congress. We’re talking about lost lives if we don’t give our men and women the equipment that they need.”

Kyl:
“The whole point here [staving off the sequester] is to try to get some economic growth, job creation, to get out of this recession.”

 

So Jennifer Rubin was never really alone in this thinking. She’s just saying it more openly and with true fear of the economic damage possible.  Still, she tried to bury what’s essentially conservative blasphemy and conventional wisdom at the political retail level, by throwing in Obamacare (which still has yet to be enacted enough to cause economic damage) into her column as another source of the blame.

“The regulatory burden on employers and the prospect of Obamacare hang over our heads. No wonder we are in an economic slump. One more quarter of this, and, according to the technical definition, we will be in a recession.”