Fact Checking the mendacity of ‘Mittens’

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Time once again for Steve Benen's weekly fact check of the shameless shapeshifter and pathological liar, Willard "Mittens" Romney. Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXVIII:

The broader concerns about Mitt Romney's comfort with dishonesty reached a milestone this week — it got The Onion treatment. (Remember, this is satire. The quotes are not actual quotes.)

For weeks many Beltway insiders had written off the Romney campaign
as dead, saying the candidate had dug himself into too deep a hole with
too little time to recover. However, with a month to go before ballots
are cast, Romney has pulled even with President Obama, and the former
Massachusetts governor credits his rejuvenated campaign to one, singular
tactic: lying a lot.

"I'm lying a lot more, and my lies are far more egregious than
they've ever been," a smiling Romney told reporters while sitting in the
back of his campaign bus, adding that when faced with a choice to
either lie or tell the truth, he will more than likely lie. "It's a
strategy that works because when I lie, I'm essentially telling people
what they want to hear, and people really like hearing things they want
to hear. Even if they sort of know that nothing I'm saying is true."

"It's a freeing strategy, really, because I don't have to worry about
facts or being accurate or having any concrete positions of any kind,"
Romney added.

The satirical report added that Romney has vowed to
continue to "just openly lie [his] ass off" until Election Day. It also
"quoted" the Republican's campaign manager saying, "It's late in the
game, but this campaign has finally found its groove. And that groove is
lying. Bald-faced, make-no-apologies, dirty, filthy lying."

Behind
all great satire, of course, is a degree of truth — or in this case,
more than a degree. Consider, for example, the 38th installment of my
weekly series, chronicling Mitt's mendacity. (This is the second longest
list of the year.)

1. At a town-hall forum in Mount
Vernon, Ohio, Romney said of President Obama, "He said he was going to
cut the deficit in half; he's doubled it."

Romney is still having
trouble with the definition of "double." The deficit on Obama's first
day was $1.3 trillion. Last year, it was also $1.3 trillion. This year,
it's projected to be $1.1 trillion. When he says the president "doubled"
the deficit, as he has many times, Romney's lying.

2. At
the same event, condemning the Affordable Care Act, Romney said, "We'll
let people choose the plans they want, as opposed to the plan that the
president thinks he and the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are going
to impose on the American people."

As Romney surely knows — his
state-based policy works the same way — the whole point of the
Affordable Care Act is to provide consumers with choices of private
plans, made available through regulated exchanges. Giving people choices
in place and "imposing" a plan are opposites.

Continue reading Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXVIII.

Previous editions of Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity: Vol. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII,XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII