President Obama is trying to evade responsibility for what happened on his watch!

The Republican campaign to oust President Obama from office (as opposed to trying to elect their guy--and that's what it boils down to if you watched the RNC convention, as I did) today is scoffing at the Democrats for trying to avoid the question "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

This is a question which itself tries to avoid the real question, namely "are you better off than you would have been under Republican control of the government?"

But let's take them at their word, even though their word is deceptive propaganda when it isn't lying outright. And their word is that whoever's president is responsible for whatever happens on his watch.

OK. Then let's talk about 9/11, which happened on the Republicans' watch.

And when it did, the Republicans instantly claimed it wasn't their fault. Their guy had only been in office for 9 months. The Kenya embassy bombing, the Cole bombing, Blackhawk Down (also an Al Qaeda action, it turns out), Al Qaeda's declaration of war on America, the security establishment's constant efforts to get the administration to take Al Qaeda seriously, the specific intel about using airliners as weapons? Naaaw.

See, war against nonstate entitities requires trained personnel, international cooperation, and relatively inexpensive warmaking technology (such as UAVs). War against major nations means multibillion-dollar weapons systems like the military-industrial complex likes to build, and you don't have to make nice to people who aren't Republican voters in America.

After 9/11, our spooks found it had come from within Afghanistan, so after sending a token force there--and make no mistake, that's what it was--the Republicans went to war with a real nation, which did require those expensive weapons systems (to a degree), in the face of zero actual evidence that Iraq had had anything to do with it. And after it became obvious that Iraq wasn't "it," the Republicans proceeded to throw up a smokescreen of history-revision so they wouldn't have to take responsibility for the thousands of American deaths on their hands and hundreds of thousands of foreign deaths also on their hands.

IF the American president is responsible for everything on his watch, and if excuses are not to be accepted...I await the Republican mea culpa for 9/11 and the Iraq war that ensued.

I won't hold my breath.

Because the Republicans aren't about taking responsibility. They're about blaming others for their own mistakes.

This leads to not learning from one's mistakes. Hence Romney's promise to revive Bush II's ham-handed cowboy diplomacy (in stark contrast to his father's adroit use of foreign alliances). Not to mention promising to revive trickle-down economics, which is a proven oxymoron. It even includes directing our hostile attention back to the Soviet Uni--er, Russia--you know, the country we have to beg rides from to get our astronauts into space since Bush II terminated the Space Shuttle without initiating its replacement?

The is how the Republicans' tag team president/veep wannabes have earned the sobriquet "Retro Romney and Lyin' Ryan."

Here's where I could lay into the Democrats for this, that and the other. But I won't, because right now nothing the Democrats could do with their guy in the White House is more than a blip compared to the damage the Republicans will do, given their control of Congress and the Judiciary. The Republicans' real goal is a one-party country; their model, Mexico's PRI, which ruled Mexico for 40 years, from one rigged election to the next. The GOP has become an entity that asks its members to have greater fealty to their party than to their country. They are precisely what President Washingon warned the nation about in his parting address, when he talked about the danger of factions.

So while I have plenty of beefs with the Democrats, it's time to saddle up and do what we can to keep President Obama in the White House. We won't get his policies--not with such an intransigent Congress--but at least we won't get the Republicans' middle-class-destroying policies.