Do YOU knowingly and repeatedly lie to people you respect? Of course not. That is part of showing respect for someone - being honest with them. As such, I can only conclude that Mitt Romney and his campaign have little or no respect for the American public. This is made even more apparent by their willingness to repeat old lies which have been roundly debunked. How low a regard must one have for people to try to feed them warmed-over lies which have already been exposed as such? That is apparently the level of regard which Team Mitt feel for all of us. He thinks we're too stupid or too brainwashed to recognize his dishonesty.
This view of the election campaign hit me today as I was posting a comment on Facebook regarding Team Mitt's newest lying ad which again claims that President Obama is "gutting welfare reform." Below the squig is my Facebook rant on this topic.
The modern GOP has no shame, no honor, no respect for the people of the United States - after all, do you continually lie to people you respect? Here is part of why Romney and the GOP are so dangerous. They continue to push their lies even when they have been completely debunked. In this instance, their latest ad in Virginia and other battleground states cites an editorial as support of their claims that Obama is "gutting" welfare reform. Their previous ad making this same claim was called a Pants-on-fire lie by Politifact, and got 4 Pinnochios from the Washington Post fact checker.
The same paper that ran the editorial they cite, The Richmond Times-Dispatch, has also debunked their lie in their news section. And despite all this, team Romney presses on retelling this lie. They seek to portray Obama as "The Welfare King" - not that there's any racism there or anything. They certainly aren't trying to stir up white working class resentment toward black people, just like they've done off and on for the past 30-some years. And Romney has the gall to claim that Obama is running a campaign of anger, (another racist code word - Obama is the angry black man you're supposed to fear), hate, and division? Sounds like a perfect description of the Romney campaign.
They are playing the same BIG LIE game with their claims that Obama cut $716 billion from medicare to fund Obamacare. The truth is that when John Boehner asked the Congressional Budget Office what it would save to repeal Obamacare, they came back with an answer he didn't like. It wouldn't save anything, in fact, repealing Obamacare would cost the government an additional $100 billion + over the next decade. The $716 billion number? That was the amount of Medicare SAVINGS that would be sacrificed if Obamacare were repealed. The bulk of that savings is applied to other areas of providing health care services. Paul Ryan's budget cites this exact same amount of savings, only his budget gives that away to billionaires. There is no question of the truth here. This is not a matter of opinion. They are just flat-out lying.
That's all they have is lies. If they had something real to run on they'd be doing it. Instead, they lie and participate in what has been called the "niggerization" of Barack Obama - trying to turn him into "the other", not really American as John Sununu claimed, lacking in Anglo Saxon heritage as the Romney campaign told the reporters in Great Britain. What a disgusting display of race-baiting, and it's not even September. At least in 2008 John McCain slapped down the more racist themes emerging on the right. In 2012 Romney has embraced them. And he has the nerve to call Obama divisive and desperate? Time for a reality check Mitt.
Richmond Times-Dispatch article