The Mittiot Cometh

Nov, 1st 2012

There really has never been a candidate like this. For anyone to say that they know what he truly believes is sheer lunacy. Chait is right:

"The different iterations of his career differ so wildly, yet comport so perfectly with his political ambitions of the moment, that it is simply impossible to separate his panders from his actual beliefs, the means from the ends."

The following video drives home the point in a fashion that would be hilarious were the stakes not so damn high. 

Via

Mitt Watch: What Sandy Tells Us About The Candidate And His Party

Oct 31st, 2012

UPDATE 4pm CST 11/1/12: In this piece, I made mention of Gov. Christie's very public praise of the President's management of the disaster response. The GOP has begun to savage him for it. That didn't take long.

Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath are perfectly legitimate political issues. That anyone would argue otherwise is ridiculous.

Chait puts it best:

"What you are going to see over the next week is an overt effort by Democrats to politicize the issue of disaster response. They're right to do it. Conservatives are already complaining about this, but the attempt to wall disaster response off from politics in the aftermath of a disaster is an attempt to insulate Republicans from the consequences of their policies."

The GOP has directly targeted our national disaster response mechanisms, having gone so far as to threaten a total government shutdown last year while seeking a nearly forty percent cut to first responders. The outright elimination of FEMA has become a central position among the party's leadership.

Mitt Watch - Puncturing The Myth Of Bain

Aug 29th, 2012

Team Romney has consistently told a tale of rugged, independent capitalist dynamism when describing the GOP nominee's record at Bain. 

He is credited with nearly singlehandedly saving it from collapse. 

This a a huge part of their argument for a corporate presidency.

Is it true? 

Not by a long shot writes Tom Dickinson:

"The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds."

He didn't build this.

It's Official. The GOP's New War Is Actually On Facts

Aug 28th, 2012

It's one thing to note for the umpteenth time that Team Romney lies regularly and without shame. Steve Benen has found that to be a full time job. It's quite another to see what has happened today; the "conservative" movement has actually rallied around a war on facts.

When GOP pollster Neil Newhouse declared earlier that Team Romney is "not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," it was not some isolated gaffe. As far as the "conservatives" are concerned, it wasn't a gaffe at all. In fact, it seems to be part of a coordinated effort to discredit the provable.

There is a stunning piece of venom from the Weekly Standard. Mark Hemingway smarms:

"Perhaps if we all ignore PolitiFact, they'll go away. But for the time being, the supposedly independent organization continues to crank out skewed and partisan work. There's no better example of this than the the current jihad the "fact checking" organization is waging against the Romney-Ryan health care plan." EMPHASIS OURS

Roll that one over for a minute. Bill Kristol's magazine is likening the act of trying to determine the veracity of political pronouncements with irrational superstition and violence. Specifically, they are coding it with a term designed to evoke images of Islamic supremacists.

They are not alone in this campaign against "fact-checking." 

NRO's editors are carrying Romney's water as well:

"The website PolitiFact is going to be truth-squadding the Republican convention speakers this week, delivering verdicts on which claims are “mostly true” and which deserve a "pants on fire" rating. Our advice: Pay no attention to those ratings. PolitiFact can’t be trusted to get the story right." EMPHASIS OURS

We are witnessing one of the only two major parties in America, the one with deeper pockets I might add, openly sneer at the truth.

Put aside the fact that Rachel Maddow's ongoing battle with PolitiFact puts the lie to arguments that they are some sort of shifty, leftist cabal.

That's not the point. The right is not suggesting that the electorate should take PolitFact or even "fact-checking" with a grain of salt or, perhaps, even do their own research.

Team Romney's mouthpieces, both official and unofficial, are signalling to the base that it is acceptable to dismiss facts altogether.

That's what they are counting on. 

Mitt Watch: Now He's Just Lying... Again

May 29th, 2012

If there's any hunk of red meat for self-declared "conservatives" which they can be relied upon to devour more voraciously than charges of "big government" I don't know what it is. Speaking to a crowd in Colorado today, Mittens Romney made the following statement:

"We have 145,000 more government workers under this president. Let’s send them home and put you back to work."

This isn't merely spin and it's not some sort of exaggeration. It's an outright, bold-faced, incredibly big-balled, straight up lie. Period. End of discussion. At least it should be.

Since President Obama took office, six hundred and eight thousand public sector jobs have been eliminated (SOURCE).

Here's the rub; Obama has actually presided over the largest contraction of government in generations, something the right has demanded for as long as can be remembered. That's well over half a million consumers not participating in the economy during the worst downturn in 80 years, a fact which has directly contributed to the stalled recovery by further depressing demand.

To Obama's army of detractors I would say this:

You can have wildly shrinking government or a robust and dynamic short term rebound.

You can't have both.

You have received full delivery on one of your movement's core demands and it is biting our country on the ass.

Sleep tight.

H/T to MM