He Just Can't Help It

Another lie from Rominee:

Under Obama, the GOP candidate says, government will "control half the economy." Economic experts rate this scare tactic somewhere between "ridiculous" and "stupid."

The article quotes several economists, among them my new go-to guy:

Bruce Bartlett, who served as a senior economist in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, was more blunt in his appraisal of Romney's assertion that Obamacare will lead to government control of half of the economy: "This analysis is so stupid it is hard to know where to begin." He notes:

Health spending has been rising for years for reasons unconnected to Obamacare. Why assume that all of any projected increase between now and 2020 results solely from that? Tossing in all private health spending as essentially part of government spending is fundamentally dishonest. Its only purpose appears to be to find some desperate way of lifting total spending above the 50 percent threshold. If you are going to do that, why not include every other sector of the economy subject to government control?

And, in case you think he'd take such factual criticism to heart, you'd be wrong. He's taken it to the next level.

Big lies, small lies. Red lies, green lies. Lies by distortion, lies by omission, lies, it seems, just for the sake of lying. Lies because he can, lies because he does. Lies because the truth won't get him elected.

People have referred to Romney's "pot calling the kettle black" strategy. It's apt. But I think a better term is the "Romney breaks into your home, kills your kids, and then says watch out Obama wants to break into your home and kill your kids" strategy. Or, for simplicity, just call it the cookie strategy.

And, having written the above a while back, the lies just keep a'coming. And this may be the most illustrative of them all:

Mitt Romney, on the campaign trail, bashes Obama for not having a jobs plan:

“[W]ith America in crisis, with 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work, he hasn’t put forth a plan to get us working again,” Romney said Tuesday. “Now I know we’re getting close to an election so he’ll come out with one soon, but three and a half years later, we’re waiting.”

Of course, as Jed Lewison notes, Obama proposed the American Jobs Act, much of which Republicans blocked, and continues to demand that Congress pass various components of it, such as investing in the nation’s infrastruture and sending federal aid to the states to staunch government job loss.

Jed is right to point out the absurdity of this, but it gets worse. In the very same appearance, Romney went on to slam Obama for blaming Congress for our economic woes:

“[h]e blames Congress, he goes after Congress, but we remember the president’s own party had a super majority in both houses for his first two years, so you can hardly blame Congress for the faults that he’s put in place himself, and so he’s casting about looking for someone to blame and just hasn’t been able to find anybody — whether it’s the ATM machines or the tsunami or Europe.”

And what is Obama blaming Congress for, exactly? Why, for not passing ... his jobs plan, which Romney says Obama lacks. So Obama is at fault for not having a jobs plan, and is simultaneously at fault for urging Congress to pass his jobs plan, which proves he’s passing the buck.

He's just got another one going, too. And another. I could go on.

Lies like that -- easily disproved, made up out of whole cloth (whatever that means) -- assume the stupidity of the intended audience, and so far that audience has done nothing to discourage it. There's no sign they ever will.

How has it come to this: a deliberate, continual, and transparent liar very possibly about to become our next president, at the hands of a carefully created electorate so befuddled, so simplistic, so pitifully naive (or is it hate-filled?) that they accept -- no, they demand -- those lies like manna from Moroni. Seriously: it's really, really discouraging.