Romney's lying machine

Every campaign exaggerates and distorts. But Mitt Romney's campaign has a well-financed machine of distortions behind it.

By Robert Reich,?Guest blogger / August 25, 2012

Billionaire Charles Koch (shown here in a 2007 file photo) and his brother were two of the founders of 'Americans for Prosperity,' which bought some $27 million in political ads that have aired in 11 swing states.

Bo Rader/Wichita Eagle/MCT/File

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I?ve been struck by the baldness of Romney?s repetitive lies about Obama ? that Obama ended the work requirement under welfare, for example, or that Obama?s Affordable Care Act cuts $716 billion from Medicare benefits.

Skip to next paragraph Robert Reich

Robert is chancellor?s professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Clinton. Time Magazine?named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including ?The Work of Nations,? his latest best-seller ?Aftershock: The Next Economy and America?s Future," and a new?e-book, ?Beyond Outrage.??He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

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The mainstream media along with a half-dozen independent fact-checking organizations and sites have called Romney on these whoppers, but to no avail. He keeps making these assertions.

Every campaign is guilty of exaggerations, embellishments, distortions, and half-truths. But this is another thing altogether. I?ve been directly involved in seven presidential campaigns, and I don?t recall a presidential candidate lying with such audacity, over and over again. Why does he do it, and how can he get away with it?

The obvious answer is such lies are effective. Polls show voters are starting to believe them, especially in swing states where they?re being repeated constantly in media spots financed by Romney?s super PAC or ancillary PACs and so-called ?social welfare? organizations (political fronts disguised as charities, such as Karl Rove and the Koch brothers have set up).

Romney?s lying machine is extraordinarily well financed. By August, according to Jane Mayer in her?recent New Yorker article, at least 33 billionaires had each donated a quarter of a million dollars or more to groups aiming to defeat Obama ? with most of it flooding into attack ads in swing states.

In early August, ?Americans for Prosperity,? one of the nonprofit front groups masquerading as a charity, and founded in part by billionaire right-wingers Charles and David Koch, bought some $27 million in ad time on spots now airing in eleven swing states.

So Romney?s lying machine is working.

But what does all this tell us about the man who is running this lying machine? (Or if Romney?s not running it, what does it tell us about a man who would select the people who are?)

We knew he was a cypher ? that he?ll say and do whatever is expedient, change positions like a chameleon, eschew any core principles.

Yet resorting to outright lies ? and organizing a presidential campaign around a series of lies ? reveals a whole new level of cynicism, a profound disdain for what remains of civility in public life, and a disrespect of the democratic process.

The question is whether someone who is willing to resort to such calculated lies, and build a campaign machine around them, can be worthy of the public?s trust with the most powerful office in the world.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. This post originally ran on www.robertreich.org.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Z3pJd15HwBg/Romney-s-lying-machine

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