Open thread: Obama’s Chip Diller speech in Ohio

As Barack Obama prepares for his “reframing” speech in Ohio at 1:45 ET today, Republicans on Capitol Hill have already produced a response to his likely strategy of whining about dealing with a do-nothing Congress.  John Boehner has a simple visual retort — standing next to a large table completely covered in jobs bills passed by the GOP-controlled House that the Democratic-controlled Senate has refused to consider. Of course, as Boehner reminds us, Senate Democrats haven’t even passed a budget in more than three years:

With President Barack Obama set to take his message on the economy to John Boehner’s backyard, the Republican House Speaker landed a preemptive blow Thursday with a video blaming Senate Democrats for a congressional logjam that has stalled bills meant to create jobs.

In the video, the Ohio lawmaker points to documents covering his desk, identifying them as House-passed legislation now blocked by the Democratic-held Senate.

“This isn’t just our work — it’s your work in progress,” Boehner says.

“You see, we’re going to keep adding to this pile, and we’re going to keep calling on President Obama and Democrats in the Senate to give these jobs bills a vote,” he says.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney isn’t letting the opportunity to pass, either.  He will deliver his own speech on the economy in Ohio, which is scheduled to start five minutes after Obama starts speaking, at 1:50.  That assumes, of course, that Obama will actually begin his speech on time, as Gabriel Malor pointed out on Twitter:

@edmorrissey It’s scheduled for 1:45. So…about 2?

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) June 14, 2012

The Associated Press reports on the battle of Ohio shaping up today,and the delicious karma:

Sharpening the choice for the nation, President Barack Obama and Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney are offering dueling visions of how to fix the economy, framing in their most direct terms the fierce debate that will decide the November election. In a flash of campaign drama, the two are giving major speeches at nearly the same time Thursday from the same state, battleground Ohio. …

Romney will talk about cutting regulation and spending, overhauling the tax system, doing away with Obama’s health care overhaul and supporting a major oil pipeline known as Keystone XL. Setting his own expectations for Obama, Romney told donors in Cincinnati: “He’ll speak with great rhetoric and eloquence. But actions and records speak a heck of a lot louder than words.”

Without doubt, Romney and Obama have starkly different visions of economic rebirth, the issue of top concern for voters. To hear them tell it, Obama thinks Romney’s jobs philosophy is a failed notion of just cutting taxes and gutting regulation, while Romney says the president is a big-government defender who is stifling the free market at the cost of economic acceleration.

Of the two, Obama is carrying more of a political burden because, as the guy in charge, he is saddled with a lumbering economic recovery. Romney can largely blame the incumbent – just as Obama, as a candidate, benefited from blaming President George W. Bush.

One interesting factoid: the White House doesn’t have this speech on the President’s official schedule.  In fact, they don’t have anything on the schedule for Obama today, including an official event at the World Trade Center site to get briefed on progress.  Talk about lowering expectations …

Let’s keep this as an open thread.  For fun, I’ll give you this preview of President Obama’s speech:

Maybe that’s a little too negative.  It’s probably more like this:

This lyric might actually appear in the speech: “I hope you learn it note for note, like good little children.”

Update: From the comments, we might expect a little lot of this, too:

• Bobby Jindal: Paternalistic, big-government liberalism is the biggest loser here
• Chris Christie: “I’ll be here to welcome” Obama when he comes to tour the NJ coast again next week
• MSNBC consensus: Obama’s speech was historic, amazing, “one of the best of his presidency”

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