At first glance Kellyanne Conway would seem like a modern day success story. She is a lawyer who clerked for a judge out of law school in the nation’s capital. She spent four years as an adjunct professor at a law school. She co-authored a book. These achievements would be enough for most to rest comfortably on their laurels in the sanctuary of the upper-middle class rewarded with prestige from peers and one’s community alike. Kellyanne, however, was just getting started.
She then worked for Luntz polling company, a right wing pollster who gave us such imaginative misnomers as the “Death Tax” as a substitute for the more benign sounding inheritance tax in order to make the tax appear completely sinister when in actuality it falls on a minuscule percentage of only the very wealthy. Conway then founded her own polling firm. There she did work for several notable politicians on the right including Ronald Reagan and the divisive Newt Gingrich. Currently, of course, she is Donald’s Trump’s campaign manager after being hired only a month earlier to find ways to better Trump’s appeal to female voters, which in his mind likely means rating them all a ten.
The question then becomes why is she such an indefatigable, unblemished, serial liar. There seems to be no moral compass there at all. Almost by definition, anyone who is a spokesman for Donald Trump must have a firm belief that the truth is relative and almost aspirational, in other words if one believes something deeply enough it magically becomes truthful. No one working for the right can respect the truth because there are so many false claims built into their epistemology, their very DNA. For example, climate change denial, denial of the theory of evolution, abstinence education, supply side economics, the contemptible conversion therapy for gays — basically all proven demonstrably false.
And then when one works for a consummate liar like Trump, the truth changes day to day and often hour by hour depending on one’s audience. After analyzing Trump’s remarks, a fact checking organization said that he lies 91% of the time. Trump even dabbles in conspiracy theories insisting that Senator Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination, for example. Of course, Trump is the one who gave respectability to the “birther” movement.
According to Politico, Trump’s falsehoods are “unprecedented” and false equivalencies between the two candidates are to be avoided. Again, according to Politico: “Though Clinton spoke for less than half as long as Trump, extrapolating the frequency of her misstatements suggests that even if she, too, spoke for as many hours as Trump, he'd still surpass her nearly four times over.”
The Republican base expects these lies and have, in a way, been infantilized by them over time. If one’s beliefs are repeatedly and judiciously catered to, no matter how wrong they are, then one remains a child intellectually and emotionally forever. As Politicsusa describes the conservative base:
”They love the lie because ideologies comfort the voter. Everyone wants to feel like they are right, righteous, and morally superior. The problem comes when people can’t accept reality because reality says they were not right. And instead of admitting that and adjusting course, they demand that everyone get blamed equally while still claiming they never made a mistake. (And the “fourth estate” not only allows this but plays dumb regarding basic facts in order to make this work.) This level of petulant avoidance of reality is what got the Republican party to the point where their base loves the biggest liar the best.”
“They don’t care that Donald Trump lies; they love him because his lies soothe them. His lies appease them. His lies make them feel justified and righteous. His lies make them feel good about who they are. The voters are the children who do not want to be grown ups and the grown ups in the party have indulged them and fed them candy to keep from having to parent, and now they are stuck with a monster of a child.”
Anyway, I digress. Back to Kellyanne Conway. She is at the ready to justify any of Trump’s statements no matter how boastful, divisive, or leaping off the page false. Like Rumpelstiltskin who spins straw into gold, Conway filibusters, evades and does what she can to make the Donald’s statements appear moderate and reasonable. Remarkably, she has even praised Trump’s “humility.” Among other transgressions, Conway has insisted Trump doesn’t hurl personal insults when his whole campaign is built upon them. They are the very reason for his ascendancy, only surpassed by his contemptible racism. After all, Trump is the one who gave debate opponents juvenile nicknames like “little Marco” or “lying Ted.” Even Megyn Kelly of Fox news scoffed at this remark, saying: “Now, you know that’s not true.”
Conway’s lying does not resemble the weighty word salads of Sarah Palin where a verb is never to be found or the ends times scenarios of a crazed Michelle Bachmann, but it is skilled lying nonetheless.
Conway’s standard arsenal when asked any question includes first attacking Hillary Clinton and then the journalist who asked the question or the media at large. For example, when asked by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota if Trump will release a document from the IRS proving he is under an audit, Conway fired back: “Are you calling him a liar?” She then attempted to change the subject back to Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment. When asked whether Trump will be releasing his tax returns so the public would know how much he has given to charity. Conway defensively replied: “I doubt it. This is like badgering. In other words, I don’t see it as journalism. I see it as badgering.”
The right rarely responds to straightforward questions, unlike the left who will respond without reflexively attacking the opposition or the media. The left doesn’t shout “bias” at every tough question and does not oppose “fact checking” the upcoming debates, as does the Trump camp. “I really don’t appreciate the campaigns thinking it is the job of the media to go and be these virtual fact-checkers,” Kellyanne Conway said. Unbelievably, the Trump camp wants to lie with impunity and opposes the traditional adversarial nature of the press in a free society.
Such contempt for the truth cheapens the political process and the high office that Trump is seeking. Republicans benefit from the resulting cynicism because they preach government dysfunction. In the meantime because of the complacency of the media, their somnambulance, trust in the press is at a historic low. This disrespect also benefits the right because they preach media bias as well. A Trump victory would reward contempt for the truth and erode our politics, leading to even greater voter apathy than at present. A lopsided loss would signal something else entirely. According to Salon: “Subsequent candidates would be on notice that they will pay a price for waging campaigns of deceit….Voters possess the power to fix this problem at the polls by rejecting candidates who lie and casting ballots in favor of the virtue of telling the truth.”