The Associated Press put out a good story over the weekend noting that many of the “jobs plans” being pushed by the Republican presidential candidates don’t seem especially likely to, well, create jobs. The AP doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground here, but it does a good job rounding up arguments and analysis from a variety of sources—from heterodox conservative economist Bruce Bartlett to survey data from business groups—to make the case that, whatever the merits of GOP solutions like lower marginal tax rates and relaxed regulation, they seem largely unresponsive to the current employment crisis.

My favorite part of the story, though, comes at the end, when the AP catalogues what the candidates have said on how they’d respond to the housing and foreclosure crisis. From the article:

After the Oct. 18 GOP debate in Las Vegas, a center of foreclosure activity, editors of the AOL Real Estate site wrote, “We didn’t hear any meaningful solutions to the housing crisis. That’s no surprise, considering that housing has so far been a ghost issue in the campaign.”


To the degree the candidates addressed housing, they mainly took a hands-off approach. “We need to get government out of the way,” Cain said. “It starts with making sure that we can boost this economy and then reform Dodd-Frank,” which is a law that regulates Wall Street transactions.


Bachmann, in an answer that mentioned “moms” six times, said foreclosures fall most heavily on women who are “losing their nest for their children and for their family.” She said Obama “has failed you on this issue of housing and foreclosures. I will not fail you on this issue.” Bachmann offered no specific remedies.


Romney told editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Don’t try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom. Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up.”


Perry spokesman Mark Miner said the Texas governor’s “immediate remedy for housing is to get America working again. … Creating jobs will address the housing concerns that are impacting communities throughout America.”

To summarize, in order: pablum; more pablum; a coherent commitment to laissez-faire; boilerplate. “Ghost issue” is putting it kindly. The AP might have added that Mitt Romney’s 59-point, 160-page economic plan (PDF) uses the words “housing” twice, “foreclosure” once, and “mortgage” once—all in a discussion of the roots of the economic crisis, not in the section where he lays out his solutions. (Meanwhile, the conservative press seems no more interested in this issue than the White House press corps: The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page, which faulted Romney’s plan for “shrink[ing] from some of the biggest issues,” used not one of those words a single time.)

It’s unsurprising that the GOP field is reluctant to spell out policies designed to stem foreclosures, alleviate mortgage debt, or stabilize home prices: to do so would be politically dangerous. As Douglas Holtz-Eakin told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in a much-discussed article published a few weeks ago, “the politics on housing are hideous”—because who wants to help pick up the tab when his neighbor can’t make the payment on a loan the bank never should have approved? Holtz-Eakin speaks from experience: he was the architect of then-presidential nominee John McCain’s plan to deal with housing debt, which was reviled by conservatives whose support McCain needed. (Left-leaning observers didn’t love it, either.)

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