Associated Press
Nearly three weeks ago, Mitt Romney suggested attack ads rejected by "the various fact-checkers" shouldn't be on the air. Candidates exposed by the fact-checkers should feel "embarrassed" and pull the falsehoods from the air.
Last week, Romney switched gears. Told that "the various fact-checkers" consider his ridiculous welfare smear to be a blatant lie, the Republican said fact-checkers are fine, so long as they agree with him. If not, they must be biased.
Today, Team Romney abandoned the pretense of caring about honesty altogether.
Mitt Romney's aides explained with unusual political bluntness today why they are spending heavily -- and ignoring media criticism -- to air an add accusing President Barack Obama of "gutting" the work requirement for welfare, a marginal political issue since the mid-1990s that Romney pushed back to center stage.
"Our most effective ad is our welfare ad," a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O'Connor, said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. "It's new information."
The claims are "new," of course, because the Romney campaign made them up. Sure, it's "new information," in the same way it would be "new information" if Obama said Mitt Romney sold heroin to children -- when one invents a lie, its "newness" is self-evident.
Romney pollster Neil Newhouse added, "[W]e're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers."
Right. So, in early August, Team Romney believed "the various fact-checkers" should be the arbiters of rhetorical propriety, but in late August, Team Romney believes they're irrelevant.
It's important to realize there is no modern precedent for a presidential candidate rejecting the premise that facts matter. Mitt Romney is trying something no one has ever seen -- he's deemed the truth to be an inconvenient nuisance, which Romney will ignore, without shame, to advance his ambitions for vast power.
If you don't find that frightening, you're not paying close enough attention.
I loved Greg Sargent's take on this, because Greg's question is so terribly important.
In this sense, the Romney campaign continues to pose a test to the news media and our political system. What happens when one campaign has decided there is literally no set of boundaries that it needs to follow when it comes to the veracity of its assertions? The Romney campaign is betting that the press simply won't be able to keep voters informed about the disputes that are central to the campaign, in the face of the sheer scope and volume of dishonesty it uncorks daily.
The quotes in the BuzzFeed piece should send a shiver down the spines of the political world. Forget parties and ideologies, put aside agendas and values, and just consider what Team Romney is saying: they can lie with impunity and they don't give a damn who disapproves. So long as it leads to more power in Romney's hands, anything goes.
Romney is, in effect, issuing something of a dare -- he will ignore facts, thumb his nose at reality, and taunt truths with a childish question: What are you going to do about it?
E. J. Dionne Jr. had a column way back in September 2004 that's always stuck with me. He noted, in the midst of the Bush-Kerry campaign, that Republicans are not above lying, but Dems seem to be squeamish about it. "A very intelligent political reporter I know said the other night that Republicans simply run better campaigns than Democrats," Dionne noted. "If I were given a free pass to stretch the truth to the breaking point, I could run a pretty good campaign, too."
That was nearly eight years ago. It was hard to predict at the time that a candidate would stop trying to "stretch the truth to the breaking point," and start telling bald-faced lies, confident he could get away with it.
I was always taught that campaigns can spin, slice, fudge, and distort the truth, but they couldn't literally make stuff up. The political fabric of our democracy tolerates a generous amount of duplicity -- so long as there's at least a kernel of truth in the claim somewhere -- but demonstrable lies are unacceptable.
Romney believes the old norms are irrelevant. I wonder if he's right.
If Romney wins, make no mistake, it will establish a new precedent, and campaigns will receive an unmistakable lesson -- go ahead and lie; you'll be rewarded for it.
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Hardly new. The "Big Lie" strategy -- especially when given an overwhelming dominance of the media -- goes back a very long way. Perhaps not in democracies, or at least they don't stay democracies, but it's certainly a very well-proven strategy.
Remember, the voters bought into the idea of the "new Nixon. Just like a bar of soap that didn't sell and is now re branded as "new and improved".
Money is spent on TV spots becasue it works.
If (God forbid) Romney becomes President and is called on to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, or Hu Jintao, or Kim Jong Un, they will know they are dealing with a liar and will act accordingly. How can that ever be in the best interest of the US and the world?
What we are seeing is an attempted fascist electoral coup d'etat. The interesting thing is that unlike the coups of 1922 in Italy and 1933 in Germany, the coup is not led by a true-believer leader in control of the movement, but rather by a spineless fool willing to do anything and say anything if it will give him power, after which he will not rule but will be ruled by the movement. That's what makes this coup so far more dangerous than the preceding ones, like Hitler being run by Ernst Roehm and Heinrich Himmler.
you are the man who writes a weekly column about Willard's lies, and honestly....THIS SHOCKS YOU?
He is white. What did you expect from people who can't explain the difference between ethnic hatred and racial hatred/ I will give Tweety credit though. He has made the break through to recognizing that he has a power based solely on the fact he is white. He is admitting taken to its logical conclusion it is dangerous to the polity has a whole. Steve might make it there one day.
I am normally impressed by the astute observations of the tin foil crowd at MSNBC. Why has nobody cottoned on to the fact that the GOP has no interest in focusing on the economy? They have thrown, like fairy dust into the air, the notion that Mitt Romney’s business background makes him ideally suited to fix the economy. They have provided no specifics and it is not in their best interests to do so. As Gov. Romney himself has said, “I’m not going to say exactly what I’m going to do because I will get attacked for it.” (my paraphrase) The Romney campaign wants to leave the fairy dust notion to float, as self-evident, in the background and use distraction politics until election day.
The pundits are all saying, “any day that the Romney campaign is not talking about the economy is a day lost to the GOP.” In reality, any day that the Romney campaign spends on trivialities is another day they will not get pinned down on their economic policies. If they can just play whack-a-mole on trivial issues, then nobody will pay attention to “the man behind the curtain.” Gov. Romney does not have to defend Rep. Ryan’s economic plan because he is running on his own plan. He does not have to provide any specifics about his own plan if the media fails to ask him about it because they are focused on the more prurient issues. Does anybody think through why Gov. Romney has not released his tax returns? (And who tipped off Harry Reid?) Why has the GOP blundered to badly on birth control? Isn’t it fascinating how the GOP is shooting themselves in the foot on the abortion issue. While the DNC is busy giggling about the “clown show” being perpetrated by the Romney campaign, they have overlooked his Achilles heel, his lack of a credible economic plan.
If the main issue before the electorate is who can best deliver an economic recovery then the choice will be between the record of 8%+ unemployment for the President and a businessman’s unvetted economic fairy dust which nobody has debunked. 51-49 and pick-em.
Maybe his economic plan will include creating jobs by employing people to comb death certificates for posthumous conversion to LDS (see wiki).
1) I don't expect the media to get beyond "Team Obama said the world is round; Team Romney said the world is flat, and added that Obama's having called it round illustrates the divisive nature of the Obama campaign."
2) Given that, I think the Dems' best response is along the lines of the old Joe Isuzu ads, with Romney in the role of Joe. If you're gonna say he's lying, do it in a hip and humorous way, otherwise everyone will talk about how shrill you are. (Sad, but true.)
Romney would not get as specific as saying 'the world is flat' (unless he is quoting a certain book on globalized economics). To the contrary, he would get angry at reporters for claiming that his attacks on the round-earth-extremism of the Dems could be interpreted as flat-earthism. If asked about his opinion about the shape of the Eath, he would refuse to give a straight answer and denounce this GOTCHA behaviour. Later video tapes of him would be unearthed that have him tout his firm beliefs in a toroidal Earth (that's donut/bagel shape, the latter also proof for his firm stand on support for Israel and the former for his stance on Medicare).
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
Dionne's comment were dependent on the golden age of the media which began w/ the exposure of Watergate. since then the owners, whom always had political affiliations, have become less individuals and more corporations. corporate culture is transnational and concerned not w/ the truth or a semblance there of , but dedicated to news as profits not facts. The social media sites fail in the same way.
The solution will become pirate media.
Did you hear?
"Mitt Romney sold heroin to children"
Pass it on...
I always suspected Mitt Romney was selling heroin to children, non-Mormon children, as a way of recruiting them. (Oh, wait, maybe I made that up. But who cares?)
... Mitt Romney sold heroin to children? Spread the word. We can truthfully say we saw it on a major cable news website.
Gov. Kasich of Ohio doesn't think welfare recipients need to work. In fact, the Federal Gov't (Pres. Obama) was not happy about this and Kasich's state was going to be fined. Kasich's answer to the problem? Put MORE people on the welfare rolls. People who actually have jobs!!! Just cook the books Kasich. Truth doesn't matter to Republicans.
http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/state/ohio-changes-welfare-program-to-avoid-federal-fine
My stomach turns as I listen to these people misguide the American people. The corporate owned media is to be blamed for this. Media companies have to be singular entities again or this country is absolutely doomed. Not today not tomorrow but somewhere in the not so distant future.
It appears more and more that Romney (and the Republicans) are incapable of telling the truth. They look at this like it's a game, and lying is just a way to win the game. But if he was to win, and a future President Romney was face to face, negotiating with Vladimir Putin, or Hu Jintao, or Kim Jung Un - they would know that he was a liar and would act accordingly. And that is a much more serious game.
Is or is not lying to the public illegal?
Facts?! What sort of politicians would we be if we let a few facts interfere with our Campaign?
Ironically, all this "fact checking" is generally using not facts but a baseline of rhetoric to score something as false. Obama's exec order on welfare is undoing the welfare to work requirement by allowing HHS to -proactively- suspend the requirement; not hear appeals from the states on a case by case basis.
Except they can only waive the requirement if the outcome is 20% higher employment outcomes. And HHS can only do so if states a) request it, and b) submit a comprehensive plan.
I thought the Republicans were all for allowing the states more leeway especially when it comes to those tyrannical federal programs. Now when Obama cedes the notion that it is possible for the states to come up with better, more individualized solutions, all of a sudden Republicans are worried about protecting the federal prerogative. If there is anyone left who actually thinks the Republican leadership has any ideological principles beyond opposing whatever Obama supports, then they're simply deluded. The entertaining bit is watching them contort their own principles like pretzels trying to keep it going. Last night, the theme was "We Built It" and one of the small business speakers talked about needing more government contracts. Christie talked about how the G.I. Bill helped his father get an education and support his family. If the modern-day GOP had been around right after WWII, they would have voted against such a socialist program as the GI Bill. The leadership has no principles and the rank-and-file's principles are straight out of the 16th century and scare the rest of the country. They better find a way to keep ALL African-Americans and Latinos from voting within the next 10 or 15 years because that will be the ONLY way they'll ever win a national election after 2030. In this campaign and its anti-voter agenda, we are witnessing the beginning of the GOP's death throes.