Given the trash talk Republicans have tossed at California lately, one might think the GOP is holding its national convention in Florida this week just to be as far away as possible from the Golden State.

To which many Californians might reply, “Say hi to Tropical Storm Isaac for us, OK?”

It’s not as if Californians can’t take a joke. Indeed, our state’s often-bizarre politics have been fodder for comedians for decades. California is not in play in the presidential election, but now the country’s most populous state has become a veritable punching bag as the GOP attempts to whip up voters nationwide by pointing to the Golden State’s budget travails.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney smack-talked California at an Aug. 8 campaign event in Iowa. “Entrepreneurs and businesspeople around the world and here at home think that at some point America is going to become like Greece or like Spain or Italy, or like California.

“Just kidding about that one — in some ways.”

It might’ve played well in the Hawkeye State — a battleground where four recent polls show President Barack Obama leading by less than 2 percentage points — but it doesn’t reflect reality, economists and fiscal experts say.

“Anyone making that comparison is looking at things at a superficial level,” said Gabriel Petek, Standard & Poor’s top analyst on California. “It’s just a completely different level of problems.”

Petek likened California’s budget woes to having a 30-year fixed mortgage and having to cut back on the household budget or make some extra money during lean times to make the mortgage payments. Greece and other bedraggled European economies, he said, are facing balloon payments and can stay solvent only if investor confidence remains strong enough to keep rolling over the debt.

“California is actually on a path of repair; it’s making some progress toward improving, which is very much in contrast to what we see happening in Europe at this point,” he said. “The fact is, the general fund is at a historically low level when you compare it to the economy.”

Of course, in politics, one sarcastic jab begets another. “@MittRomney thinks CA is like Greece,” U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., tweeted two days after Romney’s poke. “Maybe he should sell his $12M mansion in La Jolla & move to the Caymans?”

The next day, 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin picked up the thread with a Facebook post calling California “a cautionary tale” for the nation’s direction.

“Obama’s America is today’s California — complete with $100 billion taxpayer funded bullet trains to nowhere; out-of-control environmental extremists who have destroyed family farms and left some of the most fertile farmland in America fallow in order to protect a 3-inch fish; permanent high unemployment; government policies hostile to small-business job creators; crippling high taxes; an abysmal real estate market; bloated government that wastes taxpayer money; endless budget shortfalls due to massive unfunded liabilities; city after city declaring bankruptcy; and a state government run by, in the words of one Wall Street Journal writer, ‘a brothel of environmentalists, lawyers, public-sector unions and legislative bums,'” a breathless Palin wrote.

Christopher Thornberg, a founding partner of Beacon Economics and an expert in California’s economy, said he would answer Palin’s screed with a question: “If California is such a hellhole, as you describe, why does the state have some of the highest property values in the nation? You wouldn’t think the land here would be worth a plug nickel, eh?”

Thornberg, who in an earlier job with UCLA’s Anderson Forecast authored economic outlooks for California and its subregions, said he’s not a Democrat, “but listening to the bull coming from that (Republican) side of the aisle, I’m getting ready to become one.”

He said California certainly has its problems — the dominance of public workers unions, a penchant for over-regulation and so on — but it also has a vibrant, multifaceted economy and a ratio of government workers to private-sector workers that’s comparable with other states.

But with Democrats holding all statewide elected offices and majorities in both houses of the Legislature, he said, California is a convenient target for red-staters.

“They have nothing to lose by beating up on California; after all, the Republican Party here is a shambles. It’s not like they’ll be undermining themselves by knocking California,” he said. “Right-wingers inside the state constantly use California as a punching bag.”

The last GOP presidential candidate to carry California was George H.W. Bush, in 1988. Since then, Democratic nominees have won the state with ever-larger numbers. The state’s Republican voter registration has plummeted 5 percentage points in the past decade to 30.5 percent.

GOP convention delegate Judy Lloyd, of Danville, who served in President George W. Bush’s Labor Department, said Californians “deserve” the ridicule.

“I’d like to see us get things back under control,” said the upstate New York state native who moved to California in 1998 when Gov. Pete Wilson was leaving office. He “left the state in the black,” Lloyd said. “And look at where we are now.”

She said the convention delegation is heavy with prominent businesspeople such as 2010 gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who now runs Hewlett-Packard — folks “who have actually built businesses and created jobs.”

“We take it seriously because we feel attached to our state and we want to learn from delegates from other states that are doing better and more prosperous than we are,” Lloyd said. “We love our weather. We love California. … But it’s just not the same as it used to be.”

Josh Richman covers politics. Follow him at Twitter.com/josh_richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.