My old friend Bernard Chumm just wrote here on Saturday about the corner of lies Obama is painting himself into. I only want to put an exclamation mark on what Bernie said, because even as we all know that the Obama folks are trying to define Romney as a big business dude who ships jobs overseas and cheats, and really is no better than a Harvard prof at putting money in another man’s pay envelope (there’s that hidden public sector vs private sector lie again)
…we also know that with a simple flip of the lip, Romney can turn this entire campaign into a conversation about Obama’s obsessive practice of lying instead.
Now that Obama has doubled down instead of walking back the “felony” claim made by a staffer about a “fact” both he, and his staff, and the media know to be untrue, Mitt should turn the tables and tell the world how sad it is that the president (not his staff, not the accomplice media) has reduced his entire campaign to a series of lies (“Lies” works here, better than “misstatements” of “untruths”). When you or I or Rush Limbaugh say “lies” people ho-hum, but when a candidate for the presidency says it, people gasp. And pay attention. )
(Not to be picky, you have to be convicted before you’re a felon. I’ve committed more felonies than I care to count, and probably will again, but I ain’t no stinkin’ felon. And for a guy who’s admitted to dozens of felonies in his autobiography, but isn’t a felon either, you’d think he’d have a clue as to what one is.)
By now everyone is giving Romney advice as how to best deflect these charges suggesting a diversion, such as releasing more income tax returns. (Answer: When Obama releases college history, etc.)
This is how Romney can change the entire conversation.
Bernie Chumm had it right, there is no truth Obama can both report and boast about. Obama must now go out and preselect his audiences so that he can be guaranteed they score high on the gullibility meter, so he can then report (lie) he has added jobs (all in the public sector, and most over $75K/year), lowered taxes (i.e., the withholding tax rebate was a tax cut), lowered costs, (Obamacare has skyrocketed beyond the original budget). He plagiarized Elizabeth Warren (who next, Deval Patrick?) by telling these undiscerning masses that were it not for the county road gangs with picks and shovels Henry Ford could never have built the Model A. And were it not for those picks and shovels those gang laborers could have designed River Rouge themselves, just like Henry did.
But the biggest lie Obama has told isn’t that anybody could have done what Bill Gates did, if only he’d had a government steward to show him the way. The Big Lie is that there will not be any more Bill Gates, ensuring that the peoples’ children will be cemented into a caste, never able to move up or even sideways without first having been plucked out by one of Obama’s capos. Just like Kenya.
I can’t think of an easier image to sell to the public, and while the media goes on national talk television and admits all the claims Obama is making about Romney are false, they also say “but it is working,” without mentioning that why it is working is because they are not calling them lies in their news stories.
Romney can undo the media here, for they can’t not report an Obama-is-a- Liar-campaign. It’s the one campaign that will keep on giving, for every lie Obama tells can be proved, and every time he steps onto the stage at a rally, he must either repeat old ones, or invent new ones. A 10th grader can fact-check Obama.
I know it’s a little bit of a crap shoot, but as with Reagan continually upping the ante with the Soviets on the arms race, the lies have to collapse, in a heap, eventually. And since the media can be relied on to only attack Romney (as mean-spirited, etc) when it’s over, the media will go down in flames as well. (Actually, knowing this the media will begin doing post-Obama 2013 analysis by September/October, and consider their role in the new world of Romney, and will likely start dialing it back. Better Obama than them. That’s what craven dogs do.)
Why they will do this, as Bernie mentioned, is that up-swell in “Obama is a liar” rhetoric already simmering our there. It will increase in tone, resonance, and star-power. There will be defections, big name defections by late summer.
This isn’t rocket science. You don’t have to call Obama a socialist. I already do that. Just paint him a liar. Over and over again. Take those lies and attach them to his persona to define the man. Attach them to his self-image. Jonathan Winters once admitted himself into a sanitarium because “I got to believing my own stuff.” Obama believes his own stuff. Shake that.
Don’t scold or chastise, but deride, as one might a peer in college or law school, who has just tried to BS his way through moot court. Let him know his peers are onto his booshway.
There is that old rule Bernie mentioned, that the stink of a liar out-polls all other smells. Obama is bathing himself in the sulfurous aroma of a liar. While it is difficult for an innocent man to day in, day out defend himself against lies levied against him, that’s nothing compared to the man who must defend himself against a relentless barrage of truths.
This may be the last time we will get to practice this ancient American custom, so let’s go for it with gusto.
