All the president’s strawmen.

Here’s Karl Rove, with some succinct points:

Mr. Obama also said that America’s economic difficulties resulted when “regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.” Who gutted which regulations?

Perhaps it was President Bill Clinton who, along with then Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, removed restrictions on banks owning insurance companies in 1999. If so, were Mr. Clinton and Mr. Summers (now an Obama adviser) motivated by quick profit, or by the belief that the reform was necessary to modernize our financial industry?

Perhaps Mr. Obama was talking about George W. Bush. But Mr. Bush spent five years pushing to further regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He was blocked by Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank. Arriving in the Senate in 2005, Mr. Obama backed up Mr. Dodd’s threat to filibuster Mr. Bush’s needed reforms.

… During his news conference on Feb. 9, Mr. Obama decried an unnamed faction in the congressional stimulus debate as “a set of folks who — I don’t doubt their sincerity — who just believe that we should do nothing.”

Who were these sincere do-nothings? Every House Republican voted for an alternative stimulus plan, evidence that they wanted to do something. Every Senate Republican — with the exception of Judd Gregg, who’d just withdrawn his nomination to be Mr. Obama’s Commerce secretary and therefore voted “present” — voted for alternative stimulus proposals.

Then there’s Mr. Obama’s description of the Bush-era tax cuts. “A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy,” he explained in his Tuesday speech, after earlier saying, “tax cuts alone can’t solve all of our economic problems — especially tax cuts that are targeted to the wealthiest few.”

The Bush tax cuts were not targeted to “the wealthiest few.” Everyone who paid federal income taxes received a tax cut, with the largest percentage of reductions going to those at the bottom. Last year, a family of four making $40,000 saved an average of $2,053 because of the Bush tax cuts. The tax code became more progressive as the share paid by the top 10% increased to 46.4% from 46% — and the nation experienced 52 straight months of job growth after the cuts took effect. And since when is giving back some of what people pay in taxes “transferring wealth?”