That is from Mitt Romney in an about-to-be-aired interview in the US. He is talking about the up coming debates he is to have with Obama, of which he says:
I think the challenge that I’ll have in the debate is that the President tends to, how shall I say it, to say things that aren’t true. I’ve looked at prior debates. . . . Am I going to spend my time correcting things that aren’t quite accurate? Or am I going to spend my time talking about the things I want to talk about?’
Since the media standard in the US is that anything said by Obama is by definition true and unchallengeable, it is a problem, an immense problem. Obama does not much need to worry about the truth content of what he says so much as its voter impact. Who you gonna believe, me or your lying ears, specially since the media will be blaring how accurate everything Obama said had been? Let me therefore return to my old favourite from Peggy Noonan:
The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The ‘Analytics Department’ is looking for ‘predictive Modeling/Data Mining’ specialists to join the campaign’s ‘multi-disciplinary team of statisticians,’ which will use ‘predictive modeling’ to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. ‘We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions.’
Here is a process that is designed to generate perfectly crafted statements designed to bring in the vote irrespective of their truth content. This, and the media who swallow Obama whole, are the reasons Obama remains in the game. It is a post-modern view of the world where truth is not much more than what you can get others to believe.
Watch them blow this up into something like “Romney calls Obama a lying nigger.”
perturbed
15 Sep 12 at 2:35 am
It’s a classic Rovian attack. Take your weakness and use it to attack your opponent. Of course, this fits into your narrative Steve that it will be all the media’s fault for Obama being elected. I don’t understand when groups like Politifact and the AP bend over backwards to point out “falsehoods” from democrats (end medicare as you know it, and don’t believe Bill Clinton because he lied about getting a blow job) they still get painted with the Obama lackey brush.
The job description that Peggy Noonan quotes could easily be applied to get out the vote drives and web marketing as to speeches. But that would be admitting the dems are better at something than the Republicans.
Keep at it Steve – I’m sure your shrillness will increase as/if the election continues to lean towards Obama.
WadeJ
15 Sep 12 at 2:43 am
It is also astonishing because the implication is that the ideology and policy of the president are completely malleable and disposable, rather than based on a set of values and guiding principles. The team finds out what plays and shovels it out the door for a seething idiot mass with a gaping maw that must be sated. Obama stands for nothing except the retention of power.
Abu Chowdah
15 Sep 12 at 2:48 am
This is almost too much to take Abu from the side that supports Romney, possibly the most malleable presidential candidate ever.
WadeJ
15 Sep 12 at 2:55 am
Well bend over and take it, Wade. We’re discussing the candidate who admits to having an advanced statistical weathervane team guiding his policy.
Idiot.
Abu Chowdah
15 Sep 12 at 3:11 am
Abu, where in the quote above does it say that the analytic team determines policy? Or is that just something that Peggy, Steve et al just know is happening.
WadeJ
15 Sep 12 at 3:15 am
Is the meaning here obscure for you?
Abu Chowdah
15 Sep 12 at 3:24 am
Bullshit.
sdog
15 Sep 12 at 3:38 am
Ahh sdog you eloquence is a thing of beauty
WadeJ
15 Sep 12 at 3:56 am
Abu – I would read “campaign strategy and critical decisions” to mean where to put volunteers, how to do online marketing, what ads to run and where. What piece of my agenda to promote. Not what to add to my agenda, or how to change my agenda to satisfy small slices of the electorate.
WadeJ
15 Sep 12 at 3:58 am
Of course you would. Thanks.
Abu Chowdah
15 Sep 12 at 4:24 am
Well. That was embarrassing, hey?
sdog
15 Sep 12 at 6:51 am
True, and a good point, but is it new? The media likes to be on the winning side.
With Rudd, it as fawning and scraping on the way and snipping and biting on his way down. The countless stories about Rudd’s bad behaviour came out after his fall, not before.
Jim Rose
15 Sep 12 at 9:05 am
Or to paraphrase: “Politics as she is spoke”.
FFS, I am sick of these smug lying bastards.
They deserve a damn good thrashing, in my ‘umble ‘o’pinion…
Rabz
15 Sep 12 at 9:24 am
Another epic dinosaur meeja fail.
Rabz
15 Sep 12 at 9:25 am
Romney back up by 3 on Rassie.
Fisky
15 Sep 12 at 10:56 am
Obama is a man of the people – as are netbots crawling over facebook generating fraudulent advertising revenue.
.
15 Sep 12 at 10:57 am
Exactly right, WadeJ. It’s a meta-lie to try to prevent criticism of all the lies he is going to tell.
Well Mitt, that depends on how much the moderators call you on your bullshit. By rights, they should make you spend your time correcting things you’ve said that aren’t accurate. But I guess you’re trying to bully them out of that. Good luck with that.
m0nty
15 Sep 12 at 5:23 pm
No monty.
Point out specifically where Mitt has been dishonest.
.
16 Sep 12 at 12:48 am
Monty is such a Honey Boo Boo.
sdog
16 Sep 12 at 3:06 am
So the media will cover up for Obama’s lies?
Of course it will.
It’s easy for the left to lie when their philosophy is built on the lie that people can have a higher standard of living than they’ve earned.
Truth isn’t even as high as a second order priority for the left.
Jack Lacton
16 Sep 12 at 10:18 am
Quit trashing President Obama’s accomplishments. He has done more than any other President before him. He has an impressive list of accomplishments:
First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then
deny he was a foreigner.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has
never lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit rating of the
United States.
First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally
obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party
First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs
when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of
companies to his union supporters.
First President to BY-PASS Congress and implement the Dream Act
through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the
deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to
resign.
First President to terminate America ‘s ability to put a man in space.
First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that
America is no longer a Christian nation.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being
present, including letters to families of fallen soldiers.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law
unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state
it is allowed to locate a factory.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath
to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been
properly issued years ago.
First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for
catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to personally appoint 45 czars to replace elected
officials in his office.
First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.
First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half
years in office, 102 to date.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to go on multiple global apology tours and concurrent insult our Friends, tours.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights
and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year
at taxpayer expense, as well as a Barber flown in from Chicago.
First President to repeat the Holy Quran & tell us the early morning
call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.
First President to tell the military men and women that they should
pay for their own private insurance because they volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences.
Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military
that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the above suggestion.
First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the
American 50 states ( Mexico vs. Arizona ).
John Mc
17 Sep 12 at 8:33 am
“Point out specifically where Mitt has been dishonest.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Jarrah
17 Sep 12 at 8:55 am