Serial lying is part of the job description for most on wingnut welfare, but is generally considered to be a disqualification for public office.
So it is remarkable that Betsy McCaughey, a renowned serial liar, is seriously considering a challenge to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand next year.
This month, McCaughey has been stumping at the state Conservative Party's conference and at CPAC, retelling her health care reform lies to credulous Obama-haters and basking in their applause.
After the state event, she was asked if she will challenge Gillibrand:
McCaughey, who seemed happy to be asked the question, said, “I would consider it.”
McCaughey either changed her mind in two weeks, or has lied again -- so hard to tell with a serial liar.
Details, plus a telling Page 6 story, below.
Back on Jan. 20, the gossip page of the New York Post had an item headlined "Ex-pol Betsy in brutal battle."
It seems that McCaughey moved in with a married, 80-year-old Wall Street billionaire immediately after he had moved his sick wife out to a nursing home.
A daughter of the wife has sued over some money, and someone on her side provided a Page 6-worthy quote about McCaughey and her boyfriend:
His friends think he has a wet brain. Betsy showed up to court last week in thigh-high boots and a minidress.
McCaughey's comeback was quite nasty:
The lawsuit is coming from unemployed, greedy stepchildren who are trying to get money out of him. Charles has supported (his wife) with astounding, lavish generosity, and they have brought this suit because they fear that if Mr. Brunie moves on with his life, (and) divorces, they will not inherit his wealth.
The Post noted that she had publicly accused her (second) former husband, another older billionaire, of "reneging on a promise to finance her campaign for the 1998 Democratic nomination for governor."
McCaughey was asked about challenging Gillibrand, and replied:
No. I have no plans at this time to run for public office. I haven't been in public office for 15 years.
So the serial liar is also a serial gold-digging adulteress -- she was engaged to her (second) former husband while he was still married!
McCaughey's unusual personal life should also be a disqualification for major political office, especially in the alleged "family values" party.
For McCaughey's serial lying, Alex Pareene, now of Salon, had the definitive short, linky, summary at Gawker in August 2009,
Here's a taste:
Betsy McCaughey is a professional liar. She lies. The things she writes are untrue. They are not even "distortions." They are made-up.
snip
McCaughey's schtick, as described by James Fallows, is to pose as a disinterested, objective researcher who is just shocked and dismayed to find something insane and evil in a piece of legislation supported by a Democratic president.
And then she sits down to write a very serious and nonpartisan and concerned piece of analysis of this evil thing in the legislation that she made up. And then some respectable outlet publishes her serious analysis. And then, within minutes, partisan Republican columnists, talk radio hosts, politicians, and operatives are disseminating talking points taken directly from that serious piece of entirely made-up bullshit analysis.
snip
We are hard pressed to come up any equivalent figure on "the left," who openly and intentionally lies in the service of her partisan arguments, and who continues to do so with relative impunity, in major publications, long after the lies are exposed.
Also, check out James Fallows' bewilderment that people continue to take serial liars like McCaughey seriously.
With her "death panels" or other anti-ACA lies, McCaughey is seeking to revive a political career that crashed and burned in the late 1990s. She's on GOP radio and Fox "News" regularly, and also has been speaking at tea party events and local Republican fund-raisers.
I am one Gillibrand supporter who hopes McCaughey wins the GOP nomination she's begun angling for.
McCaughey will lose miserably, and will be further discredited, if that's possible.
