Sorry, Republicans. #Obamaquester didn't do the trick. You're still losing sequester blame game

For the past few weeks, House Speaker John Boehner and his Republican colleagues have been relentlessly attacking President Obama for the sequester, accusing him of being entirely responsible for what they said would be severely damaging cuts. They even rolled out a Twitter hash tag, #Obamaquester.

Tragically, the GOP's efforts have been a complete bust. For example, the latest Washington Post-Pew Research survey shows that more Americans will blame Republicans if (make that when) the sequester goes into effect, mirroring a survey released earlier this month by USA Today, also conducted by Pew.

As you can see, the new poll shows that 45 percent of adults say they would blame Republicans compared with 32 percent who say they would blame Obama:

Republicans seem to be aware of their total messaging failure. They've been simultaneously insisting on the sequester and trying to say it's the world's worst thing and Obama is entirely to blame. So now they're starting to try a new message, voiced yesterday by House Speaker John Boehner. The sequester, they now say, will save "tens of millions of jobs" that will be created at some point in the future.

In other words, Republicans are now saying the sequester is a good thing. Which I guess means they will soon start demanding credit, just as soon as those tens of millions of jobs start getting created. Alas, on this too it turns out they've got a problem: according to the Post-Pew survey, 62 percent of adults think the sequester will have a negative effect on the economy and 55 percent say they think the sequester a major effect (presumably negative) on the U.S. military. So even though Republicans are doing a bang-up job at receiving credit for the sequester, they might want to rethink their political strategy all over again.