Print 
PDF“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
Neil Newhouse, Romney Pollster
let’s talk about the lies.
The Romney campaign is continuing to push the false notion that Obama has moved to eliminate the work requirement for welfare. Earlier this month, the Washington Post fact checker gave the charge its worst rating: Four Pinocchios. Tampa’s own PolitiFact also gave the claim its worst rating: pants on fire. And FactCheck.org concluded that the claim was false.
But instead of pulling back the attack, the Republicans are pushing forward with it. The Republican National Committee released a new ad last week. Rick Santorum even repeated the claim from the convention podium.
Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster, recently explained that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” Or the facts themselves, obviously.
The tendency of the Romney campaign to intentionally misrepresent the truth has become a defining trait of this campaign cycle – though it is at odds with Romney’s own statements
TPM: Top 5 Fibs In Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech: Medicare, U.S. Credit Rating, Janesville GM Plant, Bowles-Simpson Debt Commission, Protecting the Poor
“he has clearly picked up the Romney campaign’s habit of playing fast and loose with facts..”
Michael Tomasky: Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech and His Web of Lies –
Paul Ryan pushed American politics into new territory with his convention speech, effectively daring Democrats and the media to call him out on his string of blatant falsehoods.
The Plum Line: Paul Ryan fails — the truth:
But really, the proper response to a speech like this isn’t to carefully analyze the logic, or to find instances of hypocracy; it’s to call the speaker out for telling flat-out lies to the American people. Paul Ryan has had what I’ve long thought was an undeserved good reputation among many in the press and in Washington. It shouldn’t survive tonight’s speech.
Sally Kohn (yes FoxNews) Deceiving
On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold….
Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.
Washington Post: “Paul Ryan’s Breathtakingly Dishonest Speech”:
With tonight’s speech, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have doubled down on their twin bets of 2012 — that journalists will sit back and name winners and losers without regard to who is telling the truth, and that voters are too ignorant to care about the truth. Do not let them be right.
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