"Lies, Damned Lies, and Mitt Romney's ads"

[Riot]

No. Both sides are not the same. Both sides do not "do it" equally.
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US News and World Report
August 8, 2012 RSS Feed Print

Lies, Damned Lies, and Mitt Romney's Ads

What happens to political and journalistic norms when a national campaign decides to blow past the run-of-the-mill cherry-picking of facts, distorting of policies, and playing in the gray area between truth and untruth, and instead simply runs hog wild into malicious deception and prevarication? We're going to find out.


Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has displayed a special level of shamelessness in its ads and attacks since its very first one, when it ran a clip of Barack Obama saying "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose"—a clip from 2008 when Obama was quoting an aide to then GOP nominee Sen. John McCain.

His campaign has also taken other Obama quotes out of context ("you didn't build that" and "it worked") to portray the president as having said things he flatly didn't say.

More recently they accused the Obama campaign of trying to curtail the voting rights of members of the military (a thoroughly debunked accusation—USA Today, for example, called it "a falsehood").

But the Romney campaign's latest line of attack, highlighted by a television ad accusing President Obama of attempting to "gut" President Clinton's 1996 welfare reform law, is a new level of—what's the phrase?—making stuff up.

(Or as I put it in my column today, the ad is "grotesquely, pants-on-fire, Pinocchio's nose just punched a hole in the wall misleading.")

The facts of the matter are that the Obama administration did signal a willingness last month to extend welfare law waivers (an act allowed in the law) to states if they come up with new, promising ways to improve the law's goal of getting people into jobs.

Oh and the governors who specifically asked for these waivers? They were Republican. And they're not rogue Republicans either—the idea of giving states greater flexibility to deal with welfare programs is a very traditional one in the GOP, endorsed by many, many Republican officials over the years (including, by the way, then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2005).

Those are the facts of the matter. They are only tangentially related to the fantasy spun in the Romney ad, where expressing a willingness to issue waivers to try more effective ways to get people into jobs becomes "a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements" so that welfare recipients "wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you a welfare check."

The ad concludes that "Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement," which of course hasn't been removed in the first place.

You can almost hear the discussion in Romney headquarters: "Hey, the Obama administration is talking about issuing welfare waivers." "Are they gutting welfare reform?" "Well, no—" "Doesn't matter. Gutting welfare reform is a great wedge issue we can use against him with working class whites. Let's cut the ad!"

(In the interest of fairness, while we're on the topic of mendacity, Harry Reid's assertion that he has inside information regarding Mitt Romney's super secret tax returns doesn't pass the laugh test. But this is not yet parity: Reid is being irresponsible and I believe duplicitous, but his one whopper doesn't measure up in breadth or systematic-ness with the Romney campaign's growing track record.)

And as I argue in my column today, if this is where we are in August, imagine how bad things will be in October. If we're at the point right now of simply making stuff up, what kind of fantabulations will we be assaulted with then?

Steve Benen summed it up nicely at the Maddow Blog yesterday:

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has presented the political world with an important test.

…

How are we to respond to a campaign that deliberately deceives the public without shame? …

The Republican nominee for president is working under the assumption that he can make transparently false claims, in writing and in campaign advertising, with impunity.

Romney is convinced that there are no consequences for breathtaking dishonesty.

The test, then, comes down to a simple question: is he right?

Part of the answer will have to do with how the press views and does its job (and Jay Rosen has a smart take on that question here).

But part of it will also have to do with the voters. The Romney campaign's gambit plays on two things: One is the instinct on the part of the press to treat such disputes as he-said-he-said in the name of objectivity (hence much coverage of the welfare ad as being Team Romney charge followed by Team Obama retort with little discussion of the facts).

But underlying the cynical belief that they can game the press is an even more contemptuous and condescending belief in the basic laziness and stupidity of the American people.

The Romney campaign knew that its welfare ad would be roundly blasted by the portion of the media that does fact-checking.

But they're counting on voters to absorb the charge and not pay attention to the details or follow closely enough to get the facts.

It's a flavor of disdain for the electorate. We'll find out over the next few months if it's successful.

[Thepaindispenser]

Your liberal masters still have you trotting out the line that, "you didn't build that" was taken out of context, hahahaha. So you are claiming that Obama is too stupid to know that "roads and bridges" requires using the plural "those" instead of the singular "that"? Which is it Riot? You can't have it both ways.

[Riot]

Oh, damn those videos showing ... exactly what candidates actually said. !

[Riot]

The Biggest Mitt Romney Lie (So Far)
Posted: 08/08/2012 5:04 pm
Bob Cesca

As you've probably observed already, Mitt Romney is a lie machine.

Steve Benen at Maddow Blog has been tracking Romney's mendacity and the tally is usually 20-30 items per week. That's a lot, and Benen probably doesn't catch all of them.

Any normal human being has to work hard to lie that much. But Mitt Romney is doing it as a matter of campaign strategy, specifically as a way to fire up the gullible and desperate tea party base.

By the time a Romney lie is fact-checked, it's already too late, and, besides, Romney supporters won't actually read/believe the fact-checkers who are obviously part of the liberal conspiracy to re-elect a communist Muslim. It's a strategy based on the maxim: "A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on."

Meanwhile, as I've documented here, Republican legislatures have passed laws in 11 states requiring photo IDs in order to cast a ballot. These laws will make it more difficult for lower income registered voters to participate on Election Day even though numerous studies, including a five year investigation by the George W. Bush Justice Department, have proved that voter fraud is practically nonexistent.

Recently in Ohio, Republicans tried to significantly cut back the window for early voting from five weeks to three weeks. They failed to keep the law on the books, but the Republicans managed to ban early voting on the weekends, except for military veterans who can continue to vote on Saturdays and Sundays.

However, the Obama administration filed a lawsuit against Ohio to restore weekend voting for all registered voters. Soldiers would retain weekend voting privileges, and voters would once again be allowed to vote on those days. Once again, the Democrats are trying to make voting easier and the Republicans are trying to strip people of that fundamental right.

Over the weekend, Mitt Romney, while clearly benefiting from Republican voter purges and Voter ID laws meant to discourage minority and working class voters, accused the Obama Justice Department of somehow trying to disenfranchise military voters. In other words, the Democrats are the ones who are trying to disenfranchise people -- and they hate the troops, too! The troops!

The Romney Unit on The Facebook:

President Obama's lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state's early voting period is an outrage. The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote. I stand with the fifteen military groups that are defending the rights of military voters, and if I'm entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I'll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.

In addition to sounding like a Patrick Bateman speech, that's arguably the biggest Romney lie so far (although his new welfare reform attack might have topped it).

There's nothing here that's even remotely close to the truth.

The Obama administration has absolutely not done what Romney says it's doing -- in any way. The president is actually trying to extend weekend voting to everyone, while preserving it for the troops.

Romney has used this twisted Orwellian Karl Rove style backwards logic to trick his supporters into buying this bag of hooey while reinforcing the myth that the president -- the commander in chief of the armed forces -- hates the military.

At the same time, he's reversed the Voter ID debate by making it seem as if the Democrats are trying to disenfranchise voters.

And it's in print. It's not a jittery, Uncanny Valley Romney gaffe or something he blurted out on a cable news show.

He (his advisers) carefully crafted this one, and it's entirely untrue. And, for what it's worth, Politifact declared it to be "False" while entirely debunking the Facebook post.

It is simply dishonest for Romney and his backers to claim that Obama's effort to extend early voting privileges to everyone in Ohio constitutes an attack on military voters' ability to cast ballots on the weekend before elections.

But none of that matters because it's out there now. The Facebook post has been "Liked" more than 152,000 times and shared by more than 19,000 Romney Facebook friends. And it's a lie by every measure. To wit, here are some choice comments from Romney's Facebook:

"Obama is trying to make it more inconvenient for the military to vote. Obama is a db."

"suing Ohio for equal voting days between military and civilian voters , is an attack on military voters .common sense something dipshit liberals dnt have ..."

"What a hypocrite! He sues to overturn voter ID laws so that no vote is turned away and then sues to prevent servicemen and women from disgusting! He is a disgusting President!"

Everything is taken at face value because Romney's lies are crafted to be exactly what the base wants to hear. They want to hear that the president is a hypocrite who hates the troops. They want to hear that it's the president who doesn't want people to vote -- not the GOP state legislatures and governors. So Romney gives them what they want: red meat, irrespective of its veracity.

[Thepaindispenser]

Riot you are the cure for insomnia with your pointless drivel, now try answering my question.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Thepaindispenser

Riot you are the cure for insomnia with your pointless drivel, now try answering my question.

Are you going to out your real Derby Trail ID, or keep up this charade?

[Thepaindispenser]

It is killing you that you don't know who I am. I am your worst nightmare as I expose the lies and propaganda of your liberal masters that you faithfully report. There is one of you on every site, some are even paid by your failed idol Obamato divert attention away from his lies and the destruction his policies have caused to this once great and proud country.