(CNN)When Barack Obama issued just the third veto of his presidency on Tuesday, of a bill allowing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, Republicans were outraged, or at least pretended they were outraged. House Speaker John Boehner called it a "national embarrassment," and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised a vote to override the veto, as doomed an effort as every other piece of legislation Republicans hope to pass in the next two years. But maybe Obama wasn't cruelly crushing Republicans' hopes for the limitless economic bounty that the pipeline would bring, as it turned America into a tar-sands-fueled paradise of high wages and economic opportunity. Maybe he was actually doing them a favor.
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Paul Waldman: Obama did GOP a favor with veto of Keystone, a project with claim to boosting economy that didn't hold up
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He says veto gives GOP an opportunity to come up with new ways to help grow economy and benefit all Americans
If everything went well, @placeholder could have increased the total number of jobs in the United States by a grand total of three one-hundredths of one percent.