Except it's not because you don't sit around waiting for the engines to spool going "oh deer, we're still stalling, if this continues I'll have to push the nose down". You nose down and power up in quick succession. This is basically muscle memory that every pilot has going back to their first day in a 172. And as the person you're replying to mentioned, nose down is the first thing. You don't put the throttle all the way forward until after you've put the nose down.

The issue here is MCAS. If they just trained the pilots on the handling characteristics of the MAX the increased stall tendency compared to a normal 737 would be a non-issue and they wouldn't need MCAS as the handling is still within the bounds of "perfectly reasonable".

I'm not suggesting that dropping the nose isn't the first action to be taken. My point that increasing the thrust (which is going to try to pitch the nose up) is part of the standard response to a stall (particularly at lower altitudes).

Of course but if you're recovering from a stall you're going to be very aware of where the aircraft is pointing. You're not going to let the aircraft pitch itself up on you if you're in the middle of telling it to nose down. The danger with pitching up is that the pilot and copilot might be absorbed in some other tasks during a climb and not notice it leading to a stall. That's not really a big of a risk in grand scheme of things but it's still a risk and that kind of maneuvering gets customers complaining. The solution was using MCAS to detect the conditions prior to that kind of stall and deal with it.

Pitch up tendencies under power to my understanding don’t make it an unstable airframe. If you stall, cut power, let go of the controls and the plane responds with a recoverable dive, it’s aerodynamically stable.

Some airplanes can’t be (reliably) recovered from stall, that’s another issue altogether.

That's great at FL30. For lower altitude stalls, cutting the power isn't an option.