The perfectly logical idea that Republicans are resisting any effort to aid the economy because they would rather things be worse in November 2012 so they can help themselves to winning the elections has been around Democratic circles for a while. Some Democrats used this line of attack in 2010 to criticize Republican obstruction when they held 41 seats in the House. And Chuck Schumer in particular has been pursuing this angle for a while. He let out some more of his thoughts at a Third Way breakfast this morning.

“Where do we go from here on the jobs bill? We are going to divide it into different pieces and put them before the Senate and see if our Republican colleagues continues to block it piece by piece by piece. We hope they don’t.”

“We are going to be labeling tea party economics. Tea party double-dip recession. Tea party gridlock. We think that’s going to have a real effect. So in a sense, it’s a sword and a shield. The sword is our effort to do something on jobs. The shield is pointing out what’s keeping us from moving forward.”

A reporter asked Schumer why voters were supposed to blame Republicans for economic outcomes when Democrats control the White House and the Senate. “We don’t control the Senate,” Schumer shot back. “You write that and it’s false.”

The fact that Schumer also said that deregulation “may have some positive effects five years from now” and that the Tea Party had the positive effect of putting deficit reduction “on the table” tells you a lot about the state of the Democratic Party and the influence of breakfast host Third Way. Schumer is also trying to pass a repatriation tax holiday, allowing large corporations to bring back trillions in earnings from overseas at a pittance, something with a high degree of moral hazard attached to it, and pairing it with a public-private national infrastructure bank which could be extremely dicey if not managed properly. So I’m going to pass on praising Chuck Schumer for pointing out who, exactly, is deliberately sinking the economy for personal gain.

I’ll only note this tactic, which has grown in its usage on the Democratic side. In fact, the White House tackled that argument yesterday, though their talking points on the jobs bill only hint at it. It’s hard to argue with the sentiment; a look at a long list of evidence shows that Republicans are running away from ideas they once supported because of the presence of Barack Obama in the White House.

But ultimately, the public wants results. The Administration didn’t deliver them to the degree needed on jobs in 2009 and 2010, when they had more opportunities in Congress. They didn’t deliver them through the multiple other channels they have which have nothing to do with Congress, particularly on monetary policy, Treasury Department policy and housing policy. And even now, their big bazooka shot concerns things like expediting some reviews of infrastructure projects, which is a bit dangerous to the environment but perhaps understandable if they didn’t wait 2 1/2 years to expedite the reviews.

So while the facts of Republican sabotage line up, selling that to the public will be more difficult.