Jimmie Pethokoukis isn’t buying it:

…the president’s a recent convert to this religion of low expectations. He certainly didn’t buy it when he took office. Back then, he predicted a quick and powerful economic rebound — if only lawmakers implemented his policies, such as the $800 billion stimulus. Which Congress, then with strong Democratic majorities, quickly did.

In 2009, for instance, the White House said the economy would be growing at a brisk 4.3 percent annual clip this year, with unemployment down to 5.6 percent. Indeed, Obama’s top economists predicted we’d be smack in the middle of a fat streak of high-growth years: 4.3 percent in 2011, followed by 4.3 percent growth in 2012 and 2013, too. And 2014? 4 percent growth.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton would have nothing on Obama, these predictions suggested. Back then, Team Obama scoffed at the dismal New Normal faith.

Yet we’re still waiting on the boom that they promised. Now they’re evangelizing for “the New Normal” — and hoping enough voters buy the excuse.

It’s almost as though they don’t know WTF they’re doing.

Remember, this guy is a brilliant politician. He must be. The media keeps telling us so.

Mitt should stay on the offensive on Medicare:

The Obama cuts also rely on grinding, year-after-year reductions in payments to doctors and other providers. This is a way to maintain that there are technically no changes in “benefits,” though access to and quality of care inevitably will be affected.

No one concerned with the health of Medicare would go about it in this fashion. But “Obamacare” was helter-skelter legislating, a desperate attempt to make the numbers temporarily add up.

Medicare’s actuaries consistently sound the alarm about the consequences. A May 2012 report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said, “The large reductions in Medicare payments rates to physicians would likely have serious implications for beneficiary access to care.”

It also noted the punishing effect on hospitals, nursing facilities and home-health agencies, which “would have to withdraw from providing services to Medicare beneficiaries, merge with other provider groups or shift substantial portions of Medicare costs to their non-Medicare, non-Medicaid payers.”

Oh, is that all? If a Republican president had done this, The New York Times would have called for impeachment proceedings.

Is the Republicans’ counter-assault on Medicare hypocritical? No. How — not whether — to restrain Medicare is the question. The Democratic approach, now and in the future, is blunt-force price controls. Republicans want to get savings through competition and choice.

Leftists hate competition and choice. It doesn’t give them enough power over our lives.