SXMElections.com

NASHUA--Facing a recovering economy and a tumbling jobless rate, Republican presidential candidates honing their economic message are trying tap into a lingering sense of insecurity among Americans seven years after the global financial crisis.
  And some are striking a sympathetic tone with lower-income workers in a way that contrasts with four years ago when Mitt Romney struggled to overcome perceptions that he was largely the candidate of the wealthiest Americans. Then, Republican nominee Romney had the luxury of being able to hammer President Barack Obama with an unemployment rate of more than 8 percent.
  Now, with the jobless rate at 5.5 percent, the 18 Republican White House hopefuls who gathered this weekend in the key early primary state of New Hampshire faced the challenge of arguing the country needs new economic stewardship even as the worst of the downtown has passed. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said that simply blasting Obama's economic policies would not suffice. "We will not win if we just complain about how bad things are," he told a crowd at a hotel ballroom.
  Bush, who has yet to formally announce his candidacy, tried to build a message around moving the economy to a firmer standing, arguing that many Americans still feel financially insecure. Economic growth, he said, needs to be at a rate "where people no longer believe that the end is near, that their children will have more opportunities than they have, that they're willing to take risks again."
  Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Bush and other contenders are taking the right tack. "We do not have the full-time jobs we once had. We do not have the upwardly mobile economy that we once had," Luntz told Reuters. "The public is still afraid that we are one bump in the road away from a serious recession."
  The U.S. economy grew by 2.4 percent last year, the largest increase since the depths of the recession in 2010. Bush would like to see the economy hum at closer to 4 percent and frequently points out that the rate of new business formation has dropped steadily since the 1980s and that business deaths now eclipse starts.
  Even as the economy steadily added jobs, wages have remained flat. Earnings grew just 1.7 percent in 2014, according to U.S. government data, well below the 3.5 percent that economists say is needed to reap the benefits of an expanded economy.
  The public mood remains sour. Sixty percent of Americans in March said the economy was on the wrong track, according to Reuters/IPSOS polling data, although that was an improvement from 71 percent in May 2014.