According to  GOP pundits, everything is still the Democrats fault, as good old Joe Conason reports in TruthDig: ” As Barack Obama’s economic advisers confront choices that vary from bad to worse in their mission to revive the financial sector and the broader economy, it is worth remembering that those choices were in essence inherited by the president, who is still new to his office. Listening to his critics, especially on the right, it would be easy to believe that the president is personally responsible for ballooning deficits, gigantic bailouts, ridiculous bonuses, nationalized institutions and careening markets. It would be easy to believe but it’s entirely false—and merely the latest episode in an old political con game that is all too typical of Washington.  Ever since Election Day 2008, the usual suspects have been hard at work, deflecting responsibility from the Bush administration (and the Republicans in Congress) for the catastrophic effects of conservative policy enacted during the past eight years. Within days after Obama’s victory, as stock prices fell, radio host and ideological commissar Rush Limbaugh exclaimed that we were already in the “Obama recession.”” …Among the boldest perpetrators of this con game over the past few decades is Limbaugh, who shares with his fellow Republicans a peculiar method of timing the blame for economic woe. When he was flacking for the first President Bush back in 1992, he wrote: “The worst economic period in the last 50 years was under Jimmy Carter, which led to the 1981-82 recession, a recession more punishing than the current one.” But of course the president during the 1982 recession was not named Carter; that president was the sainted Ronald Reagan.”

Looking at the national stated unemployment rate:

Nov 1976 Carter elected 7.8%

Nov 1978 Carter mid term 5.9%

Nov 1980 Regan elected 7.6%  (N.B.: many Were Better off than in 76!)

Nov 1982 Regan midterm 10.8%

Nov 1992 Clinton elected 7.4%

Nov 2000 Bush selected 3.9%

Nov 2002 Bush mid term 5.9%

Nov 2008 Obama elected 6.8%

Compare these numbers to Limbaughs lies…

see: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090325_the_con_game_of_blame/