At Politico, only Dems are to blame

In their article today, John Harris and Mike Allen report on how the volatile stock market often reacts negatively when politicians discuss public policy. But in the article, Politico reporters only point the finger at Dems for making traders nervous with recent Beltway comments, not Republicans, even though Republicans have been uniformly trash talking Obama's recovery plan.

Write Harris and Allen:

In the past, the main object of Washington public relations was to try to make news, grab a headline and maneuver for better position in the daily scramble for power and partisan advantage. Usually, no one was much affected beyond the jawboning politicians themselves. In the current financial crisis, the PR game is serious business.

They go on to highlight Sen. Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer, claiming comments they made caused jitters on the Street, as well as recent pronouncement made by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and VP Joe Biden. Basically, the more Dems talk, the worse the Dow does, seemed to be the Politico's point.

Politico then relied on at least one Republican source who backed up the article's claim that loose-lipped Dems were harming the economy and giving Wall Street fits.

But what about Republican politicians in recent weeks? Has their collective drumbeat of criticism of the Obama recovery plan had no impact whatsoever on Wall Street, or the spread of despair about the economy? How can Republican politicians be making all kinds of doomsday claims about how Obama's plan to fix the economy will surely fail, yet Politico completely ignores that trend in an article looking at the connection between pols affecting the economy?

It seems unlikely that only Democrats are causing the jitters.