Behind the Ad: Lying is contagious in the Republican Party

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: Scott Brown's Senate campaign.

Where: Massachusetts.

What's going on: What a load of crap. A little while ago the Romney campaign took words President Obama said, omitted a few, changed the context, and then ran an ad to suggest he was saying American businesses are not responsible for their own success. He was, in fact, making a simple point, one that Romney has frequently made, that public institutions, investments and other people are a key to anyone's business success, no matter how much hard work and rugged individualism is involved. The unedited version of Obama's comments make that clear.

Significantly, Elizabeth Warren, Scott's Democratic opponent, made the same case last September, which Obama chose to repeat.

As Steve Benen writes:

In his new web video, Brown reassures, "I will never demonize you as business leaders and business owners." Can he find anyone who actually demonizes business leaders? Well, no, but if you take rivals' comments out of context and cynically hope that voters are deeply ignorant, Brown and Romney -- who share campaign strategists -- hope the lie will stick anyway.

I would also note that Brown uses Democratic and Republican presidents from Kennedy on for his pro-free enterprise setup, but, alas, there is no George W. Bush in this video. Wasn't he president back in the early to late 2000s? It seems Republicans have completely forgotten.

Here's the ad, which would get a zillion Pinocchios if it were up to me. The sloppy/deceptive editing of Obama's statements is jarring.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)