Thursday, October 04, 2012

Fact Checking Romney's Debate Lies

While much of the consensus in the blogosphere is that Mitt Romney out performed Barack Obama last night, the consensus also seems to be that Romney lied through his teeth.  Whether or not the lazy and hapless mainstream media will go after him remains to be seen.  Given the growing worthlessness of many news outlets, one likely should not hold their preath.  Andrew Sullivan has collected some reactions on Romney's lies - which seem aimed at viewers who are poorly informed - and these seem to address the dishonesty of Romney the best:

Josh Marshall wonders if the press will call out Romney on his lies:
Obama simply hasn’t pressed any points where Romney said things that were demonstrably false. A bit on his tax cut plan, but not much. But how does it play over the next week? Romney’s been holding back all the details on his plans, basically refusing to talk about him. He’s put a lot on the table here, made a lot of claims which simply don’t add up. Obama hasn’t pressed the falsehoods or math that doesn’t make sense. Does the press do it tomorrow? How well do these claims wear? That’s how we’ll know how each did.
Along those lines, here's a highlight from Wonkblog's live fact-check of the debate:
Romney said his web site has a “lengthy description” of his health-care plan. In fact, it’s only 369 words. He also said it covers preexisting conditions. It doesn’t. Romney wouldn’t cover preexisting conditions for Americans who fall uninsured for periods of time, which happened to 89 million Americans between 2004 and 2007.
Jackie Calmes also catches Romney bending the truth:
Mr. Romney says Mr. Obama doubled the deficit. That is not true. When Mr. Obama took office in January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office had already projected that the deficit for fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30 of that year, would be $1.2 trillion. (It ended up as $1.4 trillion.) For the just-finished fiscal year 2012, which ended last week, the deficit is expected to be $1.1 trillion — just under the level in the year he was inaugurated. Measured as a share of the economy, as economists prefer, the deficit has declined more significantly — from 10.1 percent of the economy’s total output in 2009 to 7.3 percent for 2012.

Personally, I increasing believe that Romney is amoral and that he will say and do anything to try to win. Truth and honesty have never meant much to the man, and now they mean absolutely nothing to him. 

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