"But in recent weeks, the Romney campaign has outdone the Obama-campaign deceptions.." writes Time. Unfortunately, the "deceptions" came from Time, not the Obama campaign.
We live in the age of The Big Lie. And one of the biggest lies is that both presidential campaigns engage in comparable levels of deception. Those who promote this meme are not being evenhanded; they are being dishonest.
Take, for example, Time's latest foray into into the realm of predictable and false narratives, titled, "The Obama Campaign Claims Ownership of Truth." the author writes:
Obama campaign officials also suggested this summer that Romney might be a felon for having submitted legal filings that said he had a controlling interest in Bain Capital even after he took leave to work on the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The campaign offered no legal justification to back up the charge.
Deception One: The Obama campaign's suggestion was
not that Romney may have committed a felony because he had a controlling interest in Bain; rather, the criminality was derived from the statements in SEC filings that Romney as “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” until 2002. In other words, these SEC filings made the false claim that Romney was in charge of management and executive decisions at Bain during this period. Either Romney is now lying to voters, or investors were deceived by the false statements made in the filings.
Deception Two: Time's statement, that "the campaign offered no legal justification to back up the charge," fails the laugh test. Anyone familiar with the law or with business is aware that make false statements in a SEC filing is a criminal act, a felony subject to extended imprisonment. Check out, "Criminal Enforcement of U.S. Securities Laws." See how ABC Newscovered the issue. Search the word "criminal" in this legal memo on Federal securities laws.
Time also offered up this:
For the record, the Obama campaign has not always hewed to the truth. One of its summer television spots focusing on Mitt Romney’s abortion record is centered on an outright falsehood. It says Romney “backed a law that outlaws all abortion, even in cases of rape or incest.” Romney has been consistent in his support for a rape-and-incest exemption since 2005, when he renounced his previous pro-choice views.
By "consistent,"
Time means that Romney's claims---that he
supported prior GOP platforms outlawing all abortions with no exceptions, and his claim in 2007 that he would be "delighted to sign" a bill outlawing all abortions with no exceptions, "if there was a national consensus for it"--mean that he has been consistent.
Was the Obama campaign being somewhat misleading on that point? Yes. But things need to be put in perspective.
Double parking, and a hit-and-run homicide are both traffic violations. It's more than a little misleading to compare the Obama' campaign's occasional "double parking," with the Romney campaign's calculated genocide on the truth.