The GOP’s steady diet of whoppers

TAMPA

Has there ever been a more dishonest presidential campaign than the one Republicans are waging right now?

That’s a serious question, and it adds poignancy to the tragicomic spectacle of this ridiculous gathering. The one indisputable truth we hear from speaker after speaker at the Republican National Convention is that this is a consequential election. The country faces huge challenges and fundamental choices, and the two major parties have very different ideas about the way forward.

Anyone familiar with my columns knows that I prefer the progressive vision over the conservative one. But I believe it’s not possible for the nation to set a course without a vigorous, honest debate — and I know there can be no such contest of ideas without agreement on factual truth.

Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s speech Wednesday night was another demonstration that he and presidential nominee Mitt Romney have no apparent respect for the truth. Romney’s pollster, Neil Newhouse, boasted this week that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” I’ll say.

Ryan built his career on a reputation for wonkish immersion in the details and willingness to tell uncomfortable truths. But in his address to the convention he lied and dissembled so shamelessly that I thought I detected a whiff of desperation in the air. Or maybe it was just ambition.

The whopper with which those pesky fact-checkers had such a field day Thursday was Ryan’s attempt to blame President Obama for the shutdown of a huge General Motors plant in Ryan’s home town of Janesville, Wis. Ryan’s point of reference was a visit Obama made to the plant during the 2008 campaign.

“A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant,” Ryan said. “Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you . . .this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.”

In other words, Obama promised to help those workers by keeping the plant open but failed to deliver. This is a baldfaced lie.

As Glenn Kessler, author of The Post’s Fact Checker column, has noted, Obama visited the Janesville plant in February 2008. GM announced the plant’s shutdown in June 2008 — five months before Obama was elected and seven months before he took office. Ryan should be blaming George W. Bush, not Barack Obama.

And technically, the plant isn’t even closed. It’s on “standby,” according to GM, and can be reactivated if the demand for production rises sufficiently.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-the-gops-steady-diet-of-whoppers/2012/08/30/dfd580c2-f2c7-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_print.html

Actor and film director Clint Eastwood today earned plenty of bad reviews for his latest performance - a bizarre, rambling endorsement of Mitt Romney.

"Clint, my hero, is coming across as sad and pathetic," tweeted film critic Roger Ebert as Eastwood ad-libbed to an audience of millions - and one empty chair - on stage at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. "He didn't need to do this to himself. It's unworthy of him."

Eastwood carried on a long-winded conversation with an imaginary President Barack Obama, telling him that he failed to deliver on his promises, and it is time for Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, to take over.

"Mr President, how do you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them? I mean, what do you say to people?" he said at one point to the empty chair.

Twitter was instantly ablaze with comments mocking the Oscar-winning director of Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/clint-eastwood-mocked-over-mitt-romney-speech-8098948.html

Analysts surprised that incident of apparent racist abuse has stirred up comparatively little outrage

COMMENTATORS in the US are asking why an apparent incident of racist abuse at the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida, has caused so little outcry. Two attendees at the meeting, where Mitt Romney is launching his presidential election campaign, were ejected on Tuesday after they threw nuts at a black female camera operator and told her: "This is how we feed the animals."

CNN said the abuse, meted out to a member of its staff on Tuesday, was seen by "multiple witnesses". The convention confirmed that the abuse had taken place, saying in a statement: "Two attendees tonight exhibited deplorable behaviour. Their conduct was inexcusable and unacceptable. This kind of behaviour will not be tolerated."

It said the two were ejected from the convention by security guards. There have been no reports of police involvement.

But the incident was not widely reported, treated by most news sources as an aside in longer pieces about the Convention. Even CNN seemed reticent about the story - beaten to it by a rival and only publishing a bare bones news story online.

In his barnstormer of a speech to the swooning crowd at the Republican national convention on Wednesday night, Paul Ryan laid a mound of misdeeds at President Obama's door. To sustained applause from the floor, the vice-presidential candidate accused Obama of raiding Medicare, lying to auto workers and turning his back on the poor. But the speech (transcript here) was not always at pains to adhere to the historical record. At times, we are disappointed to report, Ryan baldly lied. Here's a round-up of Ryan's most audacious untruths

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/30/paul-ryans-speech-audacious-untruths

3. An elderly white man talking about an Obama who doesn’t even exist, by lying about everything he is, stands for, and has done.

The Romney-Ryan campaign and the Republican Party in general have become defined by a series of lies about Barack Obama. Among them are:

• The lie that Barack Obama is not an American but a foreigner.
• The lie that Barack Obama is a socialist, communist or Marxist, who hates business and business owners and is stoking the flames of jealousy against “the successful,” i.e. the rich.
• The lie that Barack Obama has raised taxes, even though he has actually cut them.
• The lie that Barack Obama has cut Medicare.
• The lie that Barack Obama has removed the work requirement from welfare.
• The lie that Barack Obama has gone on a wild spree of irresponsible government spending, which was responsible for the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating — even though the real cause was the Republicans playing chicken on a routine increase of the debt ceiling.
• The lie that Barack Obama has made the economy worse, even though economic growth has been increasing and unemployment has been decreasing since the Bush-caused economic crisis and recession of 2008-09.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/us-election-2012-update-old-man-yells-at-chair/

Watch the chair's responses to old Clintwood...

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/truth-versus-lies-the-new-political-divide/

In an interview with Toledo News Now Tuesday, vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan explained that a back injury contributed to his inflated marathon-running claims.

“I hurt my back when I was in my mid-20s, so I had to stop running. So obviously, my perception of races and times was off,” Ryan said when asked why he told a radio show that he had run a marathon in under three hours. His actual time was closer to four. “I thought that was an ordinary time until my brother showed me a three-hour marathon is, you know, crazy fast. It’s just the fact that I did it 22 years ago.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/09/05/paul-ryan-explains-marathon-mistake/?print=1

Gus: I used to run the mile in under three minutes... or was it the kilometer?... Who knows... it was such a long long time ago... and I now think it was 3 minutes and 42 seconds... or 22.2 seconds per 100 meters... But then. when this is adjusted for the speed of the freezing wind and the snow shoes... one can deduct in one's mind that one would run a mile in under three minutes, like a horse... and this before Roger Bannister did it in under 4 minutes...

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