Mitt Romney is still trying to lie his way to the top

By Richard K. Barry

What, you think it's easy to keep all these lies straight?

Back in December of last year, I wrote that the Romney campaign was giving us fair warning they would lie as much as they thought necessary to win the general election. Our initial sense of what they were capable of came by way of a campaign ad in which they "quoted" Barack Obama saying, "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." Pretty much everyone with any degree of integrity pointed out that Obama used those words during the 2008 campaign to cite something his opponent, John McCain, had said.

The New York Times described the backstory this way:

On October 16, 2008, campaigning in Londonderry, New Hampshire, Obama cast his opponent, John McCain, as out of touch with the problems facing the country – a month after the financial collapse that saw the American economy crater. Obama was expressing his incredulity at McCain's lack of understanding of the full import of the world-engulfing fiscal crisis: "Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, 'If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.'"

This is what a Romney campaign aide said at the time:

First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business... Ads are agitprop... Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It's ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context... All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.

Here's what I said at the time:

Romney's team is saying that in politics everyone lies so it's not a big deal, in fact, we should expect it. Apparently, whenever Romney or his campaign says something, we should assume that we are being manipulated. We should have no expectation that they have any respect for the truth. By their own admission, we should expect their statements are taking things out of context. This is what they are telling us about how they are and will continue to run their campaign.

Here we are many months later, and Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog picks up the thread:

What we didn't know at the time was the extent to which this tactic would be important to the Republican's campaign. Indeed, at this point, hyperventilating after taking Obama quotes out of context isn't just part of the Romney campaign strategy, it is the Romney campaign strategy.

Mitt Romney has a new ad and is, in fact, building his current messaging around a deception, a "re-working" of something Barack Obama recently said in a recent speech.

Greg Sargent first caught the lie, and it's worth reading through the evidence because this is going to happen again and again. Here is what the Romney ad has the president saying, through clever editing and omissions:

If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be 'cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Here is what Obama actually said:

If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

As Sargent says:

It deliberately removes multiple sentences about the broader theme of Obama's speech that preceded the "you didn't build that" quote in order to deprive it of its actual meaning as Obama plainly intended that. And it creates the false impression of a seamless transition.

Obama never said that individuals didn't build their own businesses. He simply indicated that business success relies heavily on many things that other people do for you and, in many cases, things only government can do. The fact is that Romney has made this point himself many times.

Romney's new ad focuses on the lie that Obama is "demonizing" a local business in New Hampshire for its hard-earned success. Its claim is that Obama thinks the government should control everything, you know, like in communist Russia. You'll recall this is a part of the narrative begun by Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu who stated recently that Obama needs to "learn how to be an American" because, presumably, he doesn't understand the importance of rugged individualism, i.e., "the American way."

Romney, being the lying bastard he is, has responded that Obama's "you didn't build that" comment "wasn't a gaffe. It was his ideology." Needless to say, it wasn't even a gaffe because he didn't say it, at least not with the meaning Romney's team of liars gave it.

Let's go back to the comment Romney's aide made last year:

We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business... Ads are agitprop... Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It's ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context...

No, it is not ludicrous, and in this case editing and taking things out of context is simply lying. Mitt Romney wants to lead the most powerful country in the world and this is the way he conducts himself. Let's be afraid, very afraid.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)