Big Lies, False Equivalency, and How Do They Get Away With It?!

BIG LIES

"In the last 30+ years the left has been at a disadvantage because while the Right has always been willing to make bold unsubstantiated statements, some that may have been true but most not, the left has always been science and evidence based. 

While Republicans categorically stated that their policies would work unsubstantiated, Democrats and Liberals seem to be always waiting for data to substantiate. Moreover the media seem to expect more substantiation from the left than the right. How then could President Obama’s birthplace stay in the media as a serious story? How else could the characterization of Obamacare “killing your grandma” be taken seriously? How else could the Romney/Ryan budget be accepted as a viable budget when it fails the simple test of basic arithmetic?" 

{from Senator Harry Reid, A Patriot Ensuring Americans Vote With Eyes Wide Open (8/7/2012)  http://goo.gl/EBVmb }

FALSE EQUIVALENCY

"In modern politics it is cool for pundits to breathlessly claim "Both sides do it" because they are too lazy or dishonest to point out the very big obvious differences. Pundits love to throw their hands up in the air and say that Republicans and Democrats are the same, and people who are frustrated with a broken political system believe it. They are not the same. They are very different. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either intellectually lazy, uninformed or lying to you."
{from Jesse La Greca/Daily Kos: STOP telling me "Both sides do it" - (7/3/2012) http://goo.gl/WmGAF }

this audio clip (above) strips away the lie of "centrism"

HOW DO THEY GET AWAY WITH IT?

"Mitt Romney’s tax and spending plans are so irresponsible, so cruel, so extreme that they are literally incredible. Voters may find it hard to believe anyone would support such things, so they are likely to discount even factual descriptions as partisan distortion. 

The pro-Obama New Priorities PAC stumbled across this phenomena early in 2012 in its focus group testing. When they informed a focus group that Romney supported the budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and thus championed ending Medicare as we know it while also championing tax cuts for the wealthy, focus group participants simply didn’t believe it. No politician could be so clueless." 

{K vanden Heuvel: Romney’s incredible extremes WaPo (8/2012)  http://goo.gl/VYlX1 }

"This is as loathsome a lie as Romney has told all year -- and given his record, that's not an easy threshold to meet. It's important to realize that this isn't a matter of opinion. CNN's headline over the weekend said, "Romney campaign jabs at Obama over voting rights suit." The headline on the Politico homepage yesterday said, "Obama, Mitt camps spar on military voting." No. Wrong. No one is "jabbing" or "sparring." One candidate lied and got caught. Full stop." 

{Romney gets caught lying about Obama, military voters - The Maddow Blog (8/2012) - http://goo.gl/L748b }

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Romney Campaign Attacks Obama For Medicare Cuts That Ryan And Romney Have Endorsed | The New Republic (8/2012) http://bit.ly/RFxU8X

• Capturing the cynicism on display here isn't easy. I'm going to try anyway. Yes, the Affordable Care Act includes substantial cuts to Medicare. But Ryan's own budget, which nearly every House Republican voted to pass and which Romney has said he would sign as president, leaves those cuts in place and uses them to finance other priorities.  In other words, the Romney campaign is attacking a proposal that Romney and his allies endorse. The most significant difference between the two sides, at least for the short- to medium-term, is how they handle the savings these cuts generate.

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More "how do they get away with it"

• Keep the focus on the dishonesty - The Plum Line - The Washington Post (8/31/2012) - http://wapo.st/OIja7n
• The other day I noted here that it would be nice to see news organizations devoting stand-alone stories focused specifically on the Romney campaign’s strategic dishonesty, open scorn for fact checking, and all around calculation that it will pay no price for adhering to no standards of accuracy whatsoever. It’s good to see that the New York Times’ excellent Michael Cooper today has weighed in with something very close to this.
• One single Obama falsehood about abortion makes the cut in a story that is focused almost entirely on a fusillade of Romney/Ryan whoppers. The story fingers “both parties” [FALSE EQUIVALENCE]at one point, even though virtually all the distortions documented come from one side, in an apparent bid for “even-handedness.” But that’s an aside. The disparity in subject matter speaks for itself: The topic of the story is plainly on what’s coming out of the Romney campaign, even if it’s impermissible to say so.
• Charles M. Blow - The G.O.P. Fact Vacuum - NYTimes.com - (8/31/2012) http://nyti.ms/NHQ31p
• I’m beginning to worry that many Americans are growing weary of isolating the lies, coming as they did in torrents. The Romney campaign seems to be banking on this fatigue 
• How the Republicans Built It - NYTimes.com (8/28/2012) http://nyti.ms/PrnXxh
• Voters looking for a few nuggets of truth would not have found them in Tampa on Tuesday.
• Robert Reich - How Romney Keeps Lying Through His Big White Teeth (Aug 28, 2012)- http://bit.ly/PpR8wn
• Presumably the Romney campaign continues its false claims because they’re effective. But this raises a more basic question: How can they remain effective when they’ve been so overwhelmingly discredited by the media?
• The answer is the Republican Party has developed three means of bypassing the mainstream media and its fact-checkers. 
• Blatant dishonesty matters more than who's 'mean' - The Maddow Blog (8/15/2012) - http://on.msnbc.com/QDcGVo
• Romney's lying -- he knows it, his staff knows it; Democrats know it, and every journalist covering the race knows it. But voters remain in the dark. The folks in Beallsville didn't know the candidate was treating them suckers because Romney lacks a basic respect for them, and many voters watching at home were probably fooled too -- in part because so many of them are uninformed, in part because they don't realize Romney is deceiving them and playing on their resentments, and in part because many in media are uncomfortable running headlines that read, "Romney Caught Lying About Welfare," even when that's exactly what happened.
• It is, to be sure, Romney's responsibility to uphold political norms and tell American voters the truth -- a responsibility the Republican treats with disdain. But when news organizations treat this as routine, and fail to hold Romney accountable for his near-constant dishonesty, they enable and encourage him.
• 7 Worst Media Brown-Nosers Who Enable Paul Ryan's Lies | Alternet (9/2012) - http://bit.ly/RgGAP6
• 1. Howard Kurtz, Daily Beast.
• 2. Dan Baslz, Washington Post.
• 3. Michael Crowley, Time Magazine.
• 4. Lisa Mascaro, Los Angeles Times.
• 5. Patrick O'Connor, Wall Street Journal.
• 6. Felicia Somnez, Washington Post.
• 7. Ben Smith, BuzzFeed.
• Romney Political Director Laughs Off Question About Falsity Of Campaign's Welfare Ads | ThinkProgress - (8/28/2012) http://bit.ly/OH2D3M
• “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Neither, judging by Romney’s repeated struggles with the truth, are they going to let their campaign be dictated by actual facts.
• The Welfare Card and the Post-Truth Campaign: How Romney’s Getting Away With Playing The Welfare Card Against Obama | The New Republic (8/15/2012) http://bit.ly/QDer53
• Romney proceeded straight from this into a retelling of Obama’s “you didn’t built that” line, but even that did not get the applause the welfare riff did. After the speech, several in the audience told me that their favorite part had been Romney’s calling out Obama for weakening welfare work requirements. Yes, one of the more depressing parts of the job of being a political reporter is watching an audience fully absorb a blatant and knowing lie. Which is, of course, what this is. Countless factcheckers—here is one of many—have unequivocally rejected the assertion that Obama has ended the work requirement. His administration has instead granted more leeway to states, including several with Republican governors, to explore new ways to get people onto welfare into jobs, with the proviso that their new approaches must increase the share of recipients with jobs.
• Making the Election About Race - NYTimes.com - (AUg 2012) http://nyti.ms/RfvURi
• The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, gave the welfare ads his lowest rating, four Pinocchios. The Tampa Bay Times’s Politifact was equally harsh, describing the ads as “a drastic distortion” warranting a “pants on fire” rating. The welfare commercial, according to Politifact, “inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance.”
• Sharp criticism has done nothing to hold back the Romney campaign from continuing its offensive — in speeches and on the air — because the accuracy of the ads is irrelevant as far as the Republican presidential ticket is concerned. The goal is not to make a legitimate critique, but to portray Obama as willing to give the “undeserving” poor government handouts at the expense of hardworking taxpayers.
• Why Romney's Tax Plan is Mathematically Impossible | Next New Deal (8/6/2012) http://goo.gl/otJKa 
• Krugman - Speaking Of Getting Everything Wrong - NYTimes.com (July 27, 2012) - http://goo.gl/vkygB : "The point here isn’t that Ryan is a fool; it is that his whole conceptual framework is wrong, wrong, wrong."