Steel yourself — these three minutes of relentless condescension, smarmy incredulity, and stunning misinformation are not easy to sit through.

I hardly know where to begin. Ed already handily addressed the Obama campaign’s continued and hackneyed insistence that Mitt Romney is taking his “you didn’t build that” line “out of context” — and I’m rather inclined to agree with Mitt Romney that the context makes the president’s remarks decidedly worse. I’ve been mentally tracking Obama’s various iterations of “the government more or less invented the Internet” since I first noticed it popping up during his 2011 State of the Union address; it’s a small admission, but it’s a clear and loaded indicator about how he thinks individuals’ success and our country’s prosperity are a magnanimous gift from the federal government.

The other money line from Ms. Cutter, however, ran thusly: “Apart from the flagrant hypocrisy, these attack ads make you wonder: Does he even understand how our economy works? We build our businesses through hard work and initiative with public and private sectors working together to create a climate that helps us grow. President Obama knows that.” Wow. I can’t fathom why they’re so eager to invite such obvious counter-punches, but here it is — President Obama’s policies have been running this economy for well over three years, and it is still in shambles. In fact, practically every indicator is currently heralding the United States’ decline back into recession, and no amount of “headwinds” or “inherited problems” is going to help Obama save face on that one.

Americans are hurting, and despite all of the Obama campaign’s attacks against Romney’s business record, it’s getting less easy to convince them that Obama is an effective steward of the economy. These days, with all of our big-government rules and regulations, it feels like the private sector is more often fighting the public sector for survival than working with it, and President Obama’s solutions always seem to involve more government. As Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has said, President Obama has never even run a lemonade stand — he had a comfy career in academia and limited time in the private sector before turning to community organizing and public office, and voters are more willing to trust Mitt Romney‘s experience on that score now that Obama has a record of mega-fail behind him. Nice try, though.