From Common Dreams -- August 29, 2012:
How Romney Keeps Lying Through His Big White Teeth
By Robert Reich
“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster.
A half dozen fact-checking organizations and websites have refuted Romney’s claims that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law and will cut Medicare benefits by $216 billion.
Last Sunday’s New York Times even reported on its front page that Romney has been “falsely charging” President Obama with removing the work requirement. Those are strong words from the venerable Times. Yet Romney is still making the false charge. Ads containing it continue to be aired.
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.
The first is by repeating big lies so often in TV spots – financed by a mountain of campaign money – that the public can no longer recall (if it ever knew) that the mainstream media and its fact-checkers have found them to be lies.
The second is by discrediting the mainstream media – asserting it’s run by “liberal elites” that can’t be trusted to tell the truth. “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans,” Newt Gingrich charged at a Republican debate last January, in what’s become a standard GOP attack line.
The third is by using its own misinformation outlets – led by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his yell-radio imitators, book publisher Regnery, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, along with a right-wing blogosphere – to spread the lies, or at least spread doubt about what’s true.
Together, these three mechanisms are creating a parallel Republican universe of Orwellian dimension – where anything can be asserted, where pollsters and political advisers are free to create whatever concoction of lies will help elect their candidate, and where “fact-checkers” are as irrelevant and intrusive as is the truth.
Democracy cannot thrive in such a place. To the contrary, history teaches that this is where demagogues take root.
The Romney campaign has decided it won’t be dictated by fact-checkers. But a society without trusted arbiters of what is true and what is false is vulnerable to every lie imaginable.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
They run on a payday loan, but that some documents are not available just now showing or fax to the lender. One of the most significant characters of the software is its use of increased bit rates to utilize maximum bandwidth permitted by the channel. Free Professional Fax Cover Sheet Layout And Template In Office. Free Professional Fax Cover Sheet Layout And Template In Office Word.Doc Format. and straight to the point, all of their fax cover letter template works great in Microsoft. Cover Letter Samples Resume Service. Find free cover letter samples and examples below. From reviewing my work, you will realize that I know how to write a cover letter that. Recent studies show that a fax machine is the most energy consuming office machine, and if you turn off the machine you can't receive faxes so you risk missing an important fax! The original fax machine worked similarly to a computer scanner and modem all in one.
No man is entitled to any more wealth than any other. Few, if any, people who make over $100,000 a year have done it honestly. While small business is to be commended, none should make over about $75,000 a year.
Post a Comment