“Most of the media is so sold out to Obama that they’re missing the obvious,” Jim DeMint said on Fox News only last week. “The policies the president has in place, especially the tax increases that just got in, are going to hurt our economy, probably actually bring it down.”

The former Republican senator from South Carolina was speaking as president-elect of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

DeMint made this remarkably dire prediction seven days before the Dow Jones industrial average hit an all-time high. The employment numbers remain weak, but they, too, are improving and helping raise confidence levels, especially in the housing market.