Bill Clinton's Speech Taking Down Romney

Bill Clinton just did a masterful job of calling Mitt Romney (and Paul Ryan) a liar.  No mincing of words, simply calling him out for telling deliberate lies.  It gets directly to the issues of the hypocrisy and betrayal of the Gospel message by the Republicans that drives me crazy.  Andrew Sullivan has some good bullet points in his live blogging.  Here is a sampling:

[B]y being a former president and exposing the shameless lies perpetrated by Romney, especially on welfare reform, he was able to say things no one else could. I don't buy the argument that Obama is more liberal than Clinton and never have. But for those who do, tonight was a brilliant reminder of the things that unite them. 

11.18 pm. Republicanism today is failed arithmetic. Clinton is really bringing this home - intellectually. It is not a series of platitudes; it is a series of arguments rebutting last week's entire convention arguments. It has far more policy substance than Romney's or Ryan's speeches. And it has the added benefit of being true.

11.15 pm. Clinton is now equating Obama's plan with Bowles-Simpson. And when you spell out the Romney plan as it exists, it does not add up. And it's perverse. Cutting revenues as a way to cut debt when revenues are at 50 year lows is not a policy. It's madness.

11.11 pm. Now the important passage on Romney's massive welfare lie. The requirement was for more work, not less. Bill Clinton is the perfect man to rebut this lie. I wonder if it will have some serious blowback for Romney. A former president has called him out on a clear lie.

11.10 pm. Now he's telling seniors that slashing Medicaid means slashing home-care for the elderly.

10.51 pm. Clinton's summary of Republican malfeasance these past four years is simply liberating. Liberating because it is true: their moral and intellectual and political degeneracy is our biggest challenge. And he is directly comparing his re-election to Obama's. And he's being as honest as he can: no one could have repaired the full damage of the 2008 crash in four years - but the green shoots are there.

10.49 pm. Genius: "We left him a total mess and he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough so we should get back into power".

 
I haven't always liked Bill Clinton, but he did a wonderful job of exposing the abject lives that are the norm in today's GOP and the Romney-Ryan campaign.