Hell, even the editors at The Economist magazine — a publication that's anything but liberal — agree with that, noting in a recent analysis of Obama's job performance that the "normal standards of fiscal rectitude have not applied in the past four years. When household, firms and state and local governments are cutting their debts, the federal government would have made the recession worse by doing the same." 

Given that it was the Bush administration's policies that caused this crisis (and we can see by his total absence from the GOP convention just how popular he is now within his own party), the Republican criticism about deficit spending under Obama is akin to setting your house ablaze and then complaining about all the water firefighters are wasting as they attempt to put it out.

Congressman Paul Ryan, the Ayn Rand devotee (at least he was before he wasn't) chosen to be Romney's running mate, is particularly despicable.

As the Romney camp's designated attack poodle, he's trying to make the case that, no matter how bad things were when Obama took office, he hasn't done nearly enough to improve the situation.

The criticism could hold some merit — were it not for the fact that, from the moment Obama was sworn in, Ryan and a group of like-minded saboteurs in the House and Senate made it their goal to impede Obama's attempts to generate economic recovery in order to help make sure he didn't get re-elected.

Their plan, hatched at a meeting attended by Ryan at a steakhouse in Washington, D.C., the very night Obama was sworn in, is detailed in Robert Draper's book Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.

Forget about what's good for the country, this cabal decided. The most important thing for us is to regain power, no matter what. 

Which is why the House voted more than 30 times to repeal Obama's health care act, even though there was absolutely zero chance of that repeal passing the Senate, while at the same time scuttling the president's American Jobs Act, which would have created at least 275,000 jobs and, depending on the economists being surveyed, as many as 2 million jobs, putting people to work building roads, schools and bridges.

To employ another analogy, the Republican response to the crisis their policies created is like pumping bullets into someone's back, then shooting out the tires of the ambulance sent to the rescue, all while decrying the pitifully slow response of those doing their best to save the victim.

News Hits is written by Curt Guyette. Contact the column at 313-202-8004 or at NewsHits@metrotimes.com.

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