Mitt Romney creates a journalistic crisis
by David Atkins
Close followers of the presidential election on both sides know that Mitt Romney has waged a campaign of breathtaking mendacity. His Republican primary opponents and their supporters know it, having been deluged with truth-bending attacks and mischaracterizations during debates. And, of course, Romney is now lying constantly about both his own and Democratic policies.
Steve Benen at the Maddow Blog has a list of thirty lies Mitt Romney has publicly told in just past week alone, his 23rd such weekly chronicle. Here are just the top ten:
1. In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Romney claimed it’s fiscally responsible to eliminate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act: “It saves $100 billion a year to get rid of it.”
That’s the opposite of the truth. According to the CBO and other nonpartisan budget estimates, killing the law would make the deficit go up, not down, and would cost, not save, the country hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.
2. In the same interview, Romney said, “I think a lot of people forgetting is there is only one president in history that’s cut Medicare by $500 billion and that is President Obama.”
Romney says this a lot. He’s not telling the truth.
3. Romney also said, “I see people holding up signs, ‘Don’t touch my Medicare.’ It’s like, hey, I’m not touching your Medicare.”
Romney endorsed Paul Ryan’s House Republican Budget plan, which ends the Medicare program and replaces it with a private voucher scheme.
4. In the same interview, Romney said President Obama has “never had the experience of working in the private sector.”
Actually, that’s not true. Obama worked at a private-sector law firm before entering public service.
5. Romney also told Hannity Obama went on “an apology tour” in his first year.
As Romney surely knows by now, he’s lying.
6. Romney, trying to talk about foreign policy, said Syria is Iran’s “route to the sea.”
Iran doesn’t share a border with Syria, and Iran already borders two bodies of water.
7. At a campaign event in Stratham, New Hampshire, Romney claimed, “Bill Clinton and so many other mainstream Democrats are revolting against the backward direction President Obama is taking his party and our country.”
In reality, Bill Clinton supports the president’s re-election and recently said a Romney presidency would be “calamitous for our country and the world.”
8. At an event in Cornwall, Pennsylvania, shared an anecdote about a local optometrist who was forced to fill out a “33-page” change-of-address form — several times — at the post office.
There is no such change-of-address form.
9. At the same event, Romney said Obama is “taking away” scholarships and charter schools for “kids in Washington, D.C.”
This has become a line in Romney’s stump speech, but it isn’t in any way true.
10. Romney also claimed, “This president has put together almost as much public debt as all the prior presidents combined.”
That’s a lie.
And there are twenty more. Just this week.
This is not just a challenge for Romney’s Democratic and progressive opponents. At a structural and cultural level, it’s in large part a challenge for the studiously “objective” press. As Michael Cohen says at The Guardian:
This is perhaps the most interesting and disturbing element of Romney’s tireless obfuscation: that even when corrected, it has little impact on the presumptive GOP nominee’s behavior. This is happening at a time when fact-checking operations in major media outlets have increased significantly, yet that appears to have no effect on the Romney campaign.
What is the proper response when, even after it’s pointed out that the candidate is not telling the truth, he keeps doing it? Romney actually has a telling rejoinder for this. When a reporter challenged his oft-stated assertion that President Obama had made the economy worse (factually, not correct), he denied ever saying it in the first place. It’s a lie on top of a lie…
Back in the old days (that is, pre-2008) it would have been considered unimaginable that a politician would lie as brazenly as Romney does – for fear of embarrassment or greater scrutiny. When Joe Biden was accused of plagiarizing British Labor Leader Neil Kinnock’s speeches in 1988, it derailed his presidential aspirations. When Al Gore was accused of exaggerating his role in “inventing the internet” (which, actually, was sort of true), it became a frequent attack line that hamstrung his credibility. Romney has done far worse than either of these candidates – yet it’s hard to discern the negative impact on his candidacy.
Romney has figured out a loophole – one can lie over and over, and those lies quickly become part of the political narrative, practically immune to “fact-checking”. Ironically, the more Romney lies, the harder it then becomes to correct the record. Even if an enterprising reporter can knock down two or three falsehoods, there are still so many more that slip past.
Reporters can do one of two things in this context: either serve as dutiful stenographers for these lies and let his political opponents spin their wheels trying to debunk each one, or actually do their jobs in service of the truth and the public interest. Our ability as voters and informed citizens to make reasoned decisions hangs in the balance.
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(h/t davidkc)