After Previously Blaming Obama For Slumping Markets, Boehner Now Downplays Surging Dow

By Ben Armbruster Today on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed above 10,000 for the first time this year as “U.S. stocks approached their highest levels since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy sent the global economy into a tailspin.” In fact, the index is up 13 percent since the start of the year.

When asked about the surging markets, House Minority Leader John Boehner(R-tan douchebag) grumbled at the news. “[You're] certainly not talking to the American people,” if you’re placing any significance on the 10,000 mark, Boehner contended:

“The American people understand that unemployment is almost at 10 percent, they understand that they might be next so there are concerns about the economy,” Boehner said. [...]

Boehner said the stock market’s rebound is a reaction to the extreme shock from earlier this year, but it says little more than that.

“At the end of the day, the American people aren’t looking at the stock market in terms of putting food on the table,” Boehner said. “They want jobs, and they want them now.”

But Boehner hasn’t always been so dismissive of the stock market’s significance. In search of an attack line on the newly-inaugurated President Obama back in March, the GOP leader thought that the dismal numbers coming from Wall Street represented the public’s dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies:

“The president certainly remains popular, but his policies are becoming less and less popular,” Boehner said, citing the continuing slide in the financial markets. “Certainly the stock market hasn’t acted very well” since Obama’s inauguration.

As the markets continue to falter, Republicans are becoming more confident in their criticisms of the president — some have already taken to using the phrase “the Obama economy.”

But Boehner has also used the markets to tout the leadership of the Republican Party. At a rally just before the GOP got its “thumpin’” in the 2006 mid-term elections, then Majority Leader Boehner argued that his party would best handle the economy reportedly by “point[ing] to a hot stock market.”