On Wednesday, Ron "Sunspots" Johnson appeared on CNN's Starting Point when he channeled his inner John McCain and claimed that the nation's economy was doing OK when President Barack Obama took office: Senator Johnson says, “The reason we're not creating those jobs is because of the choices, the policies, that President Obama took. You know, because here is the fact: he did not come into office with the economy in a free fall. We were losing jobs, but the fact is, within two months, we entered the second quarter, we only lost 0.7 percent GDP. But the economy bottomed out and then we started recovery the third quarter.”

O’Brien asks, “You don't think the economy was in free fall then?”

Sen. Johnson answers, “No. The economy began to recover in the third quarter. It'd basically flattened out by the second quarter and it actually grew close to 4 percent the next three quarters. But then President Obama's policies took effect and they started scaring consumers and business owners and as a result the economy totally stalled.”

This is the same Ron Johnson who said two years ago that Obama wasn't doing enough to stop the free fall he just said wasn't happening (emphasis mine): “His point is . . . the climate for business investment is far more certain in communist China than it is in the U.S here. I think we have created such a high level of uncertainty in this economy, because quite honestly of the agenda that Senator Feingold represents. What did they do? When they (the Obama administration) first came into office, rather than really attack the economic problem, they spent the first year plus, trying to take over one sixth of the economy, the health care bill.