WHAT GOT US INTO THIS MESS - AND WHAT WILL GET US OUT OF IT?

THE PRIMARY "BIG LIE" OF THE LEFT THIS ELECTION CYCLE IS THIS, "GOP POLICIES GOT US  INTO THIS MESS SO THAT ELECTING ROMNEY AND RYAN IS GOING BACKWARDS".

THIS IS WHY OBAMA AND AXELROD CHOSE THE WORD "FORWARD" AS THEIR CAMPAIGN THEME.

HERE'S SOME EVIDENCE THAT THIS LIE IS CENTRAL TO THEIR CAMPAIGN: IT'S EVERYWHERE:

MAHER [NIGHT OF 8/16/12]:

I think [Obama] probably shouldn't have offered so much [to Republicans], for example, in the stimulus package right away. He offered what they wanted - the tax cuts, which really are not stimulus. And he should have said from the beginning, look, I won the election, OK? We're going do it my way now. We tried that idea - that tax cuts solve every problem. We had that. And that's what got us into this mess.

GIBBS ON 8/19/12:

Gibbs also said Vice President Joe Biden’s now-famous “chains” remark last week was not a “racial comment” or “race-baiting.” 

Biden told a roughly half-black audience in Virginia on Tuesday that Romney would “let the big banks once again write their own rules – unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

“No more race-baiting than when [Republican House Speaker] John Boehner says let’s unshackle Wall Street, let’s unshackle big business,” Gibbs said. “I think the vice president was correct in exactly what happens when we unshackle Wall Street and let Wall Street go back to writing its own rules…that’s what got us into this mess.”

OBAMA 8/4/12 (WITH AUDIO):

President Obama says that more time and persistence is all the economy needs to make a full recovery. He adds that the very thing that will bring the U.S back into a recession is “going back to the policies that got us into this mess in the first place.”

OBAMA AUGUST 13TH:

"My opponent and Congressman Ryan and their allies in Congress, they all believe that if we just get rid of more regulations on big corporations and we give more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, it will lead to jobs and prosperity for everybody else," said Obama of the Republican ticket, which campaigned Sunday two hours north in the Milwaukee suburbs. "They have tried to sell us this trickle-down fairy dust before, and guess what? It didn't work," Obama said, 

OBAMA AUGUST 5TH - FROM HOT AIR:

On the campaign trail, President Obama continues to frame the election as a choice between competing visions. Every time there is a glimmer of good news on the economic front, he recycles a paragraph written for him in 2009 and that he has repeated countless times since. “The recovery is accelerating,” he tells audiences at rallies and fundraisers. “America is coming back—which means the last thing we can do is go back to the same failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place. And that’s what’s at stake in this election.”

HOT AIR'S HOWARD PORTNOY DESCRIBES WHY THIS IS A LIE (SAME LINK AS ABOVE):

... the real unemployment rate, which is currently at 15%, began its climb into the danger zone (shown in red) in the closing months of the Bush 43 administration. The change reflects one of two messes that Bush inherited from his immediate predecessor, Bill Clinton. Clinton bequeathed to Bush the dot.com bubble, which burst on March 10, 2000, and the housing bubble, which Clinton himself inherited—from Jimmy Carter—but exacerbated. During his presidency, Clinton pressured lenders to make risky loans that would “make home ownership more affordable for lower-income Americans and those with a poor credit history.”

Although Bush 43 was not without fault (he compounded Clinton’s irresponsible financial policies with his own profligate spending and expanded government with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security), he did attempt to shrink the housing bubble. In 2003, his administration proposed a new agency to oversee the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which had mismanaged their $1.5 trillion in debt holdings against interest rate increases. In response to this proposal,Democratic Rep. Congressman Barney Frank assured Americans and fellow House members:

These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis…. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.

The fact that it was later revealed that Frank personally benefited financially from both agencies is irrelevant. The situation reached a head during the final days of Bush presidency. On December 30, 2008 the housing bubble burst.

Enter Obama, who did inherit a mess as he has reminded the American tediously often. U-6 was at 15.1% at the end of Obama’s first full month in office. In May, the real rate entered the stratosphere (shown in purple) and remained there for the next 20 months. It is hard to say how much blame for the high unemployment rate rests with Bush’s and how much with Obama, but it remains a fact that Obama has been ineffectual at bringing it back down into the merely high orange range. In fact, from June through October of 2011, U-6 was back up in the purple, reaching a high of 16.4% in September. It is notable that during this period, he gave his “You should pass this jobs plan right away” speech in which he asked Congress to pass a second $447-billion stimulus package.

Which is what he hopes to do again if given a second term—that and raising taxes on job creators. His first stimulus did nothing to revive the economy or put Americans back to work, and raising taxes during an economic downturn is sheer folly by his own lights. Yet, that remains his prescription for the future. What he is essentially asking voters to do is give him a blank check to reprise his own failed policies, which have made any mess he inherited—and our lives—immeasurably worse.

PORTNOY HAS THE FACTS EXACTLY RIGHT.

WHAT GOT US INTO THE MESS WAS NOT UNSHACKLED BANKS OR UNREGULATED WALL STREET GREED.

 IT WAS SOCIALIST REGULATIONS WHICH FORCED BANKS TO MAKE BAD LOANS AND THEN GAVE THE DERIVATIVES BASED ON BUNDLES OF THOSE LOANS THE IMPRIMATUR OF A GOVERNMENT GUARANTEE.

NYTIMES ECONOMICS EDITOR GRETCHEN MORGENSEN WROTE A BOOK ABOUT IT.

AND EVERY TIME YOU HEAR OBAMA OR ONE OF HIS COMRADES SAY THAT ROMNEY OR RYAN OR THE GOP OR THE TEA PARTY STAND FOR THE POLICIES THAT "GOT US INTO THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE" YOU SHOULD TELL THEM THEY ARE LYING.

THEY ARE LYING AND PROJECTING.

WHAT GOT US INTO THIS MESS WERE LIBERAL POLICIES FROM THE LEFT.

AND MORE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTIONISM WILL NOT GET US OUT.

IF YOU WANT AMERICA TO GET OUT OF RECESSION AND MOVE FORWARD, THEN  YOU HAVE TO VOTE AGAINST THE LIBERAL POLICIES THA TGOT US INTO THIS MESS.

AND VOTE FOR THE POLICIES THAT ALWAYS CREATES MORE PROSPERITY FOR ALL.

LESS REGULATIONS, LESS TAXES, LESS GOVERNMENT INTERVENTIONISM.

LOOK AT IT THIS WAY:

UNSHACKLING THE FREE-MARKET IS NOT "TRICKLE DOWN".

THE FREE-MARKET IS THE ONLY THING THAT PROMOTES  BOTTOM-UP AND MIDDLE-OUT GROWTH.

GOVERNMENT EDICTS ARE TOP-DOWN. GOVERNMENT EDICTS ARE TRICKLE DOWN.

AND GOVERNMENT EDICTS DO NOT CREATE GROWTH.

IF AN ECONOMY RUN BY GOVERNMENT DECREE WORKED, THEN THE USSR WOULD BE THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH, INSTEAD OF A HEAP OF FOUL FLOTSAM AND JETSAM WASHING OUT ON THE SEA OF HISTORY.

VOTE ACCORDINGLY. VOTE ROMNEY-RYAN.