Will Mitt Romney’s Bet on Lying Pay Off?

[John Manning]

Washington Monthly - Paul Waldman's jaw drops at the Romney ad
team's total disregard for the truth:

Now, let me be absolutely clear about something. I’ve been paying
very, very close attention to political ads for a long time. In my
former career as an academic I did a lot of research on political
ads.

I've watched literally every single presidential general election
campaign ad ever aired since the first ones in 1952. I've seen ads
that were more inflammatory than this one, and ads that were in
various ways more reprehensible than this one (not many, but some).
But I cannot recall a single presidential campaign ad in the
history of American politics that lied more blatantly than this one.

Kevin Drum agrees:

This is what's so striking about Romney's campaign…Romney has
flatly claimed that Obama said something that, in fact, a John
McCain aide said. He’s snipped out sentences from an Obama speech
and spliced the two halves back together so nobody could tell what
he did.

Then he did it again to another Obama speech. And he unequivocally
said that Obama plans to drop work requirements for welfare even
though he’s done nothing of the sort.

This really is a post-truth campaign. It's different. It's one
thing to be nasty. All campaigns are nasty. It's one thing to twist
and distort and mock. Every campaign does that too. Even the
attacks on Al Gore in 2000, as vicious as they were, were mostly
media inventions. The Republican campaigns had the distortions
handed to them on a platter.

But this is different.

This is a presidential candidate just baldly making stuff up on the
assumption that nobody will ever know. After all, they figure, who
the hell reads Glenn Kessler aside from a bunch of Beltway nerds?
And I guess they’re right.

I half-disagree. On the one hand, the political media
has been remarkably susceptible to bullying from the right.
Ginned-up hysteria and a gullible, cowardly, lazy press has
gotten enormous mileage from the right.

But as I was saying this morning, the Romney camp
has been caught somewhat flatfooted already by the newly
minted power of the left to influence the discourse.

Watch Anderson Cooper pin down Newt Gingrich on this Romney
ad. Gingrich does the usual squirming, subject changing, and
putting forth a squid-ink fog of misdirection, but when Cooper
just keeps bearing down on the fact that the ad is blatantly
lying, even Newt is forced to say that the ad is okay because,
as Paul says, "Barack Obama and those who work for him are, in
Newt’s opinion, the kind of people who would gut work requirements
if they could, so therefore it’s OK to say that they are actually
doing it, even though they aren't." Gingrich ends up sounding like
a snake.

In politics, moral arguments are powerful, and true
moral arguments even more so. The left will be at their
strongest handed this sort of red meat on a platter. And
Romney’s straight-up bald-faced lying pushes the Republican
ability to strong-arm mainstream journalists to the very limit.

It's a slap in the face whose arrogant contempt couldn't be more
obvious. Romney is saying to the press, "You're stupid, and
gullible, and I dare you to call a spade a spade."

Now, someone betting on journalistic integrity
in this country would lose a lot of money. But a lot
of people watch Anderson Cooper. Even Brian Williams couldn't
stomach the ad which edited out the part where Obama was quoting
a McCain staffer.

Seems to me that we have a decent shot of getting these
lies covered for what they are. Worth a shot, anyway. Go
for Conor Friedersdorf’s high dudgeon: Should the Press Shame
Presidential Candidates for Lying?

~ Ed Kilgore
~~ Multiple links embedded:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/will_mitt_romneys_bet_on_lying039131.php

[John Manning]

Correction. The above article is by Ryan Cooper.

[HHW]

> >http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/will_mitt...

>
> Correction. The above article is by Ryan Cooper.

"Sounding like a snake." Haha. What is a snake supposed to sound like?

[John Manning]

The Biblical serpent?

[u4z]

John Manning <jrob...@terra.com.br> wrote:
> >>
> >> Correction. The above article is by Ryan Cooper.
> >
> > "Sounding like a snake." Haha. What is a snake supposed to sound like?
> >
>
> The Biblical serpent?
>

There is simply no more evidence for Jehovah than there is for Zeus.
Christians find no reason to believe that Zeus exists, so they do not
believe in him. For the same reason, I do not believe in Jehova. God
himself is more than welcome to share an honest conversation with me.
Until he does, I have no reason to trust that anyone is a reliable
spokesman for any god.

[Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer]

In article <FaadnT0ZoIA0x7nN...@giganews.com>, John Manning says...

"All propaganda has to be popular and has to
adapt its spiritual level to the perception of
the least intelligent of those towards whom
it intends to direct itself."

-Adolf Hitler
Mein Kampf

[Zacharias Mulletstein]

John Manning <jrob...@terra.com.br> wrote:
> >>
> >> Correction. The above article is by Ryan Cooper.
> >
> > "Sounding like a snake." Haha. What is a snake supposed to sound like?
> >
>
> The Biblical serpent?
>

Evangelicals, Baptists etc. Doesn't seem to have caught on here in the
UK (it's all terribly vulgar, don't you know?), but we hear about it in
the US and it's alarming. They seem to be rewriting American history,
trying to turn a secular, Enlightenment-rooted democracy into some kind
of Christocracy based on homophobia, the denigration of women and an
atavistic fear of scientific progress. So crazy it would be funny, if it
wasn't actually happening.

[Mike Painter]

On 8/9/2012 6:39 PM, u4z wrote:
> There is simply no more evidence for Jehovah than there is for Zeus.
> Christians find no reason to believe that Zeus exists, so they do not
> believe in him. For the same reason, I do not believe in Jehova. God
> himself is more than welcome to share an honest conversation with me.
> Until he does, I have no reason to trust that anyone is a reliable
> spokesman for any god.
>

It is clear that not only does Zeus exist but that Christians are quite
aware of this, at least those who speak Spanish do.

Jesus, in Spanish, is clearly an attempt to get his attention.

Hay Zeus is the proper pronunciation.

[SkyEyes]

On Aug 9, 6:21 pm, HHW <coaster132...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> "Sounding like a snake." Haha. What is a snake supposed to sound like?

Like a newt, but more intentionally evil.

Brenda Nelson, A.A.#34
BAAWA Knight of the Golden Litterbox
EAC Professor of Feline Thermometrics and Cat-Herding
skyeyes nine at cox dot net OR
skyeyes nine at yahoo dot com

[John Manning]

On 8/9/2012 10:52 PM, Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer wrote:
> "All propaganda has to be popular and has to
> adapt its spiritual level to the perception of
> the least intelligent of those towards whom
> it intends to direct itself."
>
> -Adolf Hitler
> Mein Kampf

Excellent illustration of the current extensive Big Money
right wing propaganda machine.

[linuxgal]

John Manning wrote:

> Excellent illustration of the current extensive Big Money
> right wing propaganda machine.

$40,000 a plate to see Obama bitch, and they say "right wing" Big Money.

--
Win8 uses Charlie Sheen's idea of "win"