The GOP's bizarro economics

The party's plan is to find some way to take credit if prosperity takes hold — or find a way to make sure it doesn't

With the economy finally, plainly on the mend, the Republican response — perhaps predictable from the party of death panels — is to deploy a bodyguard of lies* about both the causes of the crash and the reasons for the recovery.

Up in New Hampshire last weekend, the latest reincarnation of Mitt Romney purloined the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan — is there anything authentic left about Mitt? — to denounce "the Obama Misery Index." He blamed the president for "soaring numbers of Americans enduring unemployment, foreclosures, and bankruptcies." Right index, wrong president. What about that guy George W. Bush, who left behind a spiraling downturn graver than anything since the Great Depression? Romney uttered nary a word about him, obviously calculating that Republican primary voters will buy Obama-bashing in any form. Romney apparently hopes to then persuade some, just enough, of the mainstream electorate of this ahistorical, economically senseless, and intellectually bankrupt anti-fairytale by repeating it over and over again.

For 2012, Romney has set out to run the way he should have last time — as an economic Mr. Fix-It. He staked his claim in New Hampshire: "I know how jobs are created and I know how jobs are lost." The latter is surely true: Romney's business minted money by buying up companies, firing workers, and revoking their health benefits. But there's a larger problem here, and smart Republicans know it. By the time we get to the next election, Romney's argument will be irrelevant if it's morning in America again.

Republicans seem to expect or fear a continuing and convincing rebound in jobs and growth; they worry the president will get the credit. So they're deploying their bodyguard of lies on a wider front than Romney's incredible and inevitably time-limited attempt to blame Obama for the Bush disaster.

GOP leaders and strategists now contend that rising job creation is a result of the December agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts. Never mind that they adamantly opposed the $800 billion stimulus, which saved millions of jobs and staved off a depression. Never mind that Obama was always in favor of renewing the tax breaks for the middle class, which will have a far greater impact on the economy because they will be spent more than the giveaways at the top, which will largely be saved. Never mind that to secure their coveted windfall for the wealthy, Republicans agreed to a host of measures — from extending unemployment compensation, which they had previously and coldly disdained, to a one-year payroll-tax reduction — that will act as a second stimulus package.