By Tory Newmyer, writer
FORTUNE — To hear the Republican presidential hopefuls tell it at the CNBC debate this week, President Barack Obama is so clueless about the economy, he’s uprooting every green shoot emerging from the rubble of our economic collapse.
In a forum centered on economic issues, the candidates declined to meaningfully engage with each other and instead fixed their fire on the current White House occupant. Even Mitt Romney, who in previous outings has smartly circled the square of Obama’s high personal approval ratings by characterizing him as a well-meaning guy in over his head, deployed a notably sharper critique, describing the President as singularly motivated by his own reelection at the expense of a national recovery.
But before the GOP hopefuls took the stage on Wednesday outside Detroit, Michigan — ground zero for the implosion of American manufacturing — Obama was getting some praise for his economic focus from an unlikely source. “Quite frankly, the candidate for president who’s talking most about manufacturing today is the President,” said Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, a group that during the George W. Bush years fostered a reputation as one of the more strident partisan players among Washington’s most powerful business lobbies.
As an erstwhile Republican frontrunner put it, “Oops.”
Timmons himself is a veteran Republican hatchet man, serving as a top strategist for the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm during Bush’s first term. In his new role leading NAM — he’s been with the group since 2005 but only took over as president in January — Timmons says he’s happy to give credit where it’s due: “I don’t care who carries the ball for us.”
And the Obama White House has earned points with the association by leaning into an effort to overhaul workforce training; successfully wrapping up free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea; and rolling back plans to impose new regulatory burdens on business, like the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed air quality rules and tightened workplace noise standards offered by the Occupational and Safety Health Administration.
The two men atop the Republican presidential field, meanwhile, have their work cut out. Both Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital founder, and businessman Herman Cain failed to turn up for a forum on manufacturing issues the group hosted in Pella, Iowa last week — despite NAM’s efforts to round up the entire crop of hopefuls for the event starting back in April. Asked if he was disappointed by Romney’s no-show, a politic Timmons offered instead that he’s “really impressed with the five candidates who chose to prioritize manufacturing on November 1 in Pella, Iowa.”
The candidates have cause to pay attention. The manufacturing group, which claims 11,000 members employing 12 million people, has deep pockets — and plans to invest in a multimillion-dollar issue-advocacy campaign to keep manufacturing at the center of the national debate next year.
NAM doesn’t do endorsements, but as the campaign heats up, Timmons says his group will continue to “call ‘em like we see ‘em” as far as the candidates’ policy prescriptions go. To that end, he measures his praise of the Obama team with some criticism. “There are several things this administration has done that are detrimental and destructive to manufacturing, as well, and we’re not moving that needle forward as quickly as we need to,” he says. “In fact, I would say it’s not moving at all and if anything it’s moving back a little bit.”
