A sociopath is usually defined as a person who lies incessantly to get their way and related to a compulsive liar who lies out of habit. For compulsive liars and sociopaths, lying is the normal way of responding to questions because telling the truth is extremely awkward and uncomfortable while lying just feels right. There is nothing quite as pathetic as watching a sociopathic liar stand straight-faced and spout drivel that the audience knows without a doubt is false, but that is the peril of listening to Willard Romney.
I find no joy in calling Mitt Romney a liar. Name-calling does little good under the best of circumstances. Then again, the term “name-calling” implies insult based on lack of facts and/or evidence. When it comes to Mitt Romney, the man lies with such thoroughness and frequency that it’s so thoroughly documented as to be barely newsworthy. Outside of people like Rachel Maddow, few in the media even bother making any mention at all of Romney’s epic mendacity.
Someone- I’ve long since forgotten who- once told me that if you’re going to commit a crime, you’d best make it big enough to make it worth your while. If you get away with it, you’re set; if you get busted, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you went big. Go big or go home. Romney has discovered that if dishonesty and mendacity becomes his lingua franca, eventually people won’t even notice that he’s lying. At the risk of having one of my detractors invoke Godwin’s Law or accuse me of engaging in Reductio ad Hitlerum, Josef Goebbels was right: Repeat a lie often enough with sufficient fervor and it eventually becomes the truth.
Romney’s speech last week to the Newspaper Association of America was but another instance of him repeating things he wishes were true and knows will be…if only he repeats them enough.
There’s Romney assertion that President Obama doesn’t want to “share his real plans” with Americans. His talking points include the contention that the President was attempting to “distract us from his record because he doesn’t want to run on his record.”
Project much, Governor?? Or would it be inconvenient that you were pushing universal health care in Massachusetts long before the Affordable Health Care Act was even an idea?
One of Romney’s more egregious lies is his frequent assertion in his standard stump speech that President Obama didn’t cause the recession, “but he made it worse.” That this is provably false seems to matter not at all to Romney. He says the President “made it worse,” ergo the President has in fact “made it worse,” and failed to “turn around the economy and to lead us back to full employment.”
If Romney thinks the economy is worse today than when President Obama took office, he is lying because the Great Recession’s duration is acknowledged to be from late 2007 to the middle of 2009, and although growth is slower than desired, Romney knows the economy has improved. Only a fool, or a liar, would assert that today’s economy is worse than during the midst of the recession….new figures showed unemployment claims fell to their lowest level since 2008 just prior to the Great Recession’s massive job losses. According to experts, when jobless claims drop below 400,000 it signals an improving jobs landscape, but March’s figures were below 370,000 that suggest jobs are being created at a rapid pace. The downward trend in unemployment claims coincides precisely with when the President’s Recovery Act (stimulus) began spending money early in 2009 which, by the way, was still during the Great Recession.
Repeat a lie often enough….
I’m going to be very interested to see what happens come the general election. With only two candidates to focus their considerable energies on, will the Mainstream Media pick up on the fact the Romney lies frequently, egregiously, and with alacrity? Or will they give him a free pass and focus on perceived inconsistencies in the President’s speeches and debate responses?
As if I even need to answer that….
