Republicans look for the downside in October jobs numbers

When Barack Obama was elected, Republicans decided that good economic news would henceforth be bad news for them, and with good economic news in the October employment numbers, Republicans are looking to draw attention to any bad news they can come up with.

The economy added 171,000 jobs in October, and the estimates from August and September were revised upward by 50,000 and 34,000 respectively. But more than half a million people started looking for work after having been too discouraged to even be counted as unemployed in previous months, and some of those people didn't find jobs. As a result of a large number of people becoming optimistic enough about the economy to look for work, the unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8 percent to 7.9 percent, and Republicans had their talking point:

The unemployment rate is higher today than when Obama took office, w/fewer people in the workforce. We can't afford 4 more yrs of this.
' @Reince via Twitter for iPhone Uhh, Reince, what happened to unemployment under the last Republican president? For that matter, in recent decades, both private sector jobs and manufacturing jobs have grown more under Democratic presidents than Republican ones. But yeah, the Republican argument is that because Obama hasn't fixed in four years the problems George W. Bush created in eight years, we "can't afford" not to go back to Bush's policies.
ROMNEY: "Today's increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill"
' @jamiedupree via TweetDeck Give Mitt a break. He's flailing ever since he lost his "unemployment is over 8 percent" argument against Obama.

House Speaker John Boehner:

"Four years of persistently high unemployment and long-term joblessness might be the best President Obama can do'but it's nowhere near what the American people can do if we get Washington out of their way."

Given the "if we get Washington out of their way" claim there, it's worth noting that in October, public sector employment fell by 13,000 jobs. So government job losses actually dragged down job creation once again.

Republican policies caused the economy to crash. Republican obstruction has made the economy harder to fix. And Republicans want us to focus only on bad economic news. That's some advertisement for them for letting them take over the economy again, isn't it?

Please contribute to help President Obama in the final days of the campaign.