The GOPropoganda ‘big lie’ machine

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

So Politifact rates Romney’s “didn’t build that” attacks false. And this is key:

We think his meaning is clear — that both business people and government play a role in the American enterprise system, not purely one or the other.

Steve Benen explains that the GOPropoganda "big lie" is central to their entire 2012 campaign. All out of context, all the time:

As we discussed last week, at this point in the race, Republicans aren't just occasionally taking Obama quotes out of context; they're actually building their entire 2012 campaign strategy around sentiments the president didn't actually say. I've honestly never seen anything like it.

Let's start a running count:

1. The Romney campaign took Obama out of context in its very first television ad of the race.

2. When the president told business leaders that U.S. policymakers have been "a little bit lazy" when it comes to attracting businesses to American soil, Republicans took that out of context and launched a series of attacks.

3. When Obama said private-sector job growth is "fine" relative to the public sector, Republicans took that out of context, too.

4. Obama said public institutions help businesses succeed, and Republicans continue to take that out of context.

And 5. Obama said Clinton's tax policies were better than Bush's, which the RNC is taking out of context.

Remember, in theory, none of this should be necessary. If the president were the radical leftist his attackers make him out to be, Republicans wouldn't have to resort to cheap garbage like this. They'd be able to use real Obama quotes and real Obama policies.

Instead, we're left with ridiculous tactics that treat voters like idiots.

And no one demonstrates the ridiculousness of GOPropoganda as well as Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, who did a full take down of the GOPropoganda "big lie" machine in this recent segment of the show (video below the fold).

Continued…

The GOPropoganda machine is hanging its entire campaign on a wilfull and deliberate out-of-context "big lie." But the GOPropoganda machine is having a hard time finding "self made" businessmen who did not benefit from assistance from the government. Every businessman they have trotted out this week on their road show has had government assistance.

As Greg Sargent reports Romney `I Built This’ supporter benefits from taxpayer dollars – The Plum Line – The Washington Post:

The Romney campaign held another one of its “I Built This” events yesterday in Florida to draw public attention to Obama’s “didn’t build that” quote. One of the small business owners the Romney campaign showcased as an example of someone Obama had insulted was an owner of A.D. Morgan, a construction firm.

Michael Van Sickler of the Tampa Bay Times did a little digging, however, and look what he found:

According to its website, A.D. Morgan — a construction firm — has received at least $150 million since 1999 for work on government buildings, prisons, schools and libraries. The figure represents only the total from the fraction of news releases that included a dollar figure. The company lists more than 130 projects that it has completed; nearly all of them are in the public sector.

As Adam Serwer remarked in another context, “Romney is having a hard time finding businesses that didn’t get any help from the government.”

Daily Kos adds, "Keep in mind, this is after an entire week of ads and events that similarly featured businesses that had received very direct help from the government":

It seems painfully evident at this point that Mitt Romney's campaign seriously sucks at, well, campaigning. Their singular message for the last week or so has been all about how the president of the United States dared to suggest that America's noble businessmen benefit from things like "roads and bridges," specifically, and dared point out that it is the cruel, oppressive American government and cruel, oppressive American taxpayers that provide those roads and bridges, and how horrible the president must be for thinking such things.

Indeed, apparently this rather banal and oft-repeated observation about the interplay between government and business was considered such an insult to the business community, a community of which Mitt Romney is self-appointed lord and master, that the Mitt campaign felt compelled to respond with all possible force. And their response, consisting in part of an ad showing a John Galtish businessman being outraged by Obama saying such mean, anti-business things, sucks worse than the history off all the things that have previously sucked in the Mitt Romney campaign, and that is saying something.

Because that businessman complaining up there? He's a poster child for government assistance to businesses:

The New Hampshire Union Leader’s John DiStato today reports that in 1999 the business in question, Gilchrist Metal, “received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority ‘to set up a second manufacturing plant and purchase equipment to produce high definition television broadcasting equipment’…” In addition, in 2011, Gilchrist Metal “received two U.S. Navy sub-contracts totaling about $83,000 and a smaller, $5,600 Coast Guard contract in 2008…”

The businessman, Jack Gilchrist, also acknowledged that in the 1980s the company received a U.S. Small Business Administration loan totaling “somewhere south of” $500,000, and matching funds from the federally-funded New England Trade Adjustment Assistance Center.

“I’m not going to turn a blind eye because the money came from the government,” Gilchrest said. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting some of my tax money back. I’m not stupid, I’m not going to say ‘no.’ Shame on me if I didn’t use what’s available.”

So the guy the Romney campaign went to for their attack ad has a business has received $800,000 in tax-exempt bonds, another $500,000 or so in small business loans, does contracting work for the U.S. Navy, but he's pissed off that Obama said that government helps businesses. Say what you will, but that sounds like the perfect Mitt Romney voter, right there.

By itself it would be a minor act of comedy, but the Romney campaign has apparently been basing their entire pushback on non-government-helped businessowners who, glory be, actually get government help. Last week he held an anti-Obama pushback at an auto repair shop, saying "this is not the result of government," etc., only to have have it undermined almost immediately:

[I]n an interview with Boston-based reporter Jon Keller of WBZ-TV, Maloney acknowledged that his business received some government help. “The only way I was able to come here, because I had no money, was with an industrial-revenue bond,” Maloney said in the interview. Industrial-revenue bonds are typically issued by local and state governments to attract new business to an area.

… and his "We did built it!" rally today (good gawd, really?) featured, yes, multiple defense contractors. Because nothing says "government never helped my business" more than cashing regular checks from that same government.

There's at least two possibilities here. Possibility one is that the Mitt Romney campaign sucks so very, very badly at messaging that it didn't even occur to them that their multiple publicity stunts and advertisements touting business independence from taxpayers and the government should probably not involve businesses that have had significant assistance from taxpayers and the government. The other possibility, though, is that Mitt Romney's business friends are such a cloistered community that Mitt sincerely doesn't know anyone whose business hasn't gotten direct and substantial assistance from the government. He doesn't know any, and in the entire sphere of American businessmen who are Mitt Romney supporters, his entire campaign staff can't find any either.

Greg Sargent concludes:

We can argue endlessly about that one line in Obama’s speech and what the larger context meant. But when you strip away all the noise, here’s what’s left behind: to argue that this kind of spending — and government in general — can help facilitate success does not degrade that success or demean the individual inititative and ingenuity that went into producing it. Romney needs to obscure this basic and obvious truth, which is why he and his surrogates continue to suggest Obama said that only government is responsible for your success, and you had nothing to do with it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the entire argument being made right now by this major party presidential candidate is based on a complete fiction.