[jeffkrol]

good thing too..................

Mitt Romney Campaign: We Will Not 'Be Dictated By Fact-Checkers'

Mitt Romney's campaign said on Tuesday that its ads attacking President Obama's waiver policy on welfare have been its most effective to date. And while the spots have been roundly criticized as lacking any factual basis, the campaign said it didn't really care.

"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said at a panel organized by ABC News

i can almost hear the sneer on the phrase "fact checker" ..............

The administration's proposal does not actually offer to waive work requirements. It asks states that are interested to suggest ways they might be able to get more people into jobs if they had more flexibility in running welfare-to-work programs. It also requires that the results be verifiable.

Numerous fact-checkers have panned Romney for continuing to claim Obama gutted welfare reform, yet the Romney campaign and its surrogates -- including House Speaker John Boehner earlier on Monday -- are still making the assertion.

Herbert has not joined that chorus and declined to do so in a recent letter to the administration.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/gary-herbert-welfare_n_1834314.html...elections-2012

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Last edited by jeffkrol; 08-28-2012 at 12:05 PM.

[grhazelton]

good thing too..................

Mitt Romney Campaign: We Will Not 'Be Dictated By Fact-Checkers'


i can almost hear the sneer on the phrase "fact checker" ..............



Gary Herbert, Utah Governor, Won't Endorse Romney Claim That Obama Is Gutting Welfare Reform

Well, politicos of all stripes have a rather high tolerance for factual uncertainty (a fancy way of saying that to them truth is flexible), but the current Republican seem to be more tolerant than is usual. Now I generally applaud tolerance, but....it is appalling that the campaign doesn't care that they are using Dr Goebbels' Big Lie tactic. I guess intellectual honesty is not one of the GOP's concerns. "And so it goes...." as our political process circles the drain.

Refreshing to see that Gov Herbert has some respect for the truth in spite of his party affiliation.

[jeffkrol]

Well, politicos of all stripes have a rather high tolerance for factual uncertainty (a fancy way of saying that to them truth is flexible), but the current Republican seem to be more tolerant than is usual. Now I generally applaud tolerance, but....it is appalling that the campaign doesn't care that they are using Dr Goebbels' Big Lie tactic. I guess intellectual honesty is not one of the GOP's concerns. "And so it goes...." as our political process circles the drain.

Refreshing to see that Gov Herbert has some respect for the truth in spite of his party affiliation.

UNFORTUNATELY not enough backbone to reject the lie........... half a glass..

[Ratmagiclady]

So, that's Mitt's self-righteous way of saying he doesn't care if what he says is true or has anything to do with reality?

Got it.

[GeneV]

To be honest, the fact-checkers have a mixed record the last couple of years. More and more opinion is getting into these checks, but it has generally favored Romney.

[jeffkrol]

addendum:

Mark Kleiman suggests that horserace reporters begin clearly spelling out that Romney has “made a strategic decision to try to bury Obama under a blanket of false charges.” Would that be an exaggeration? No, it wouldn’t. What if newspapers devoted extensive front page pieces to dissecting Romney’s decision to continue basing entire ad campaigns on widely debunked claims, even as Romney advisers openly boast about the success of their dishonest ads and openly declare that they won’t be constrained by fact-checking?

Could something like that begin to shift the dynamic a bit and make it harder for a campaign to keep lying at this pace? I don’t know, but it would be nice to find out.

Rick Santorum repeats inaccurate welfare attack on Obama

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/call-out-the-lies-right-i...m_opinions_pop

[ihasa]

As Buzzfeed reports this morning, top Romney advisers say their most effective ads are the ones attacking Obama over welfare, and that they will not allow their widespread denunciation by fact checkers as false slow down their campaign one little bit:

“Our most effective ad is our welfare ad,” a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O’Connor, said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. “It’s new information.”...

The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” awarded Romney’s ad “four Pinocchios,” a measure Romney pollster Neil Newhouse dismissed.

“Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” he said.

That’s a very interesting admission. But it gets better. Reading this brought to mind Romney’s own remarks about fact-checking and political advertising not long ago. Needless to say, he has a different standard for the Obama campaign:

“You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad,” Romney said on the radio. “They were embarrassed. Today, they just blast ahead. You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them.”

The upshot is that Romney doesn’t have an intellectual objection to fact checking’s limitations in a general sense, at least when it’s applied to the Obama campaign. In that case, fact checking is a legitmate exercise Obama should heed. But at the same time, the Romney campaign explicitly says it doesn’t see it as legitimate or constraining when it’s applied to him.

By the way, this isn’t the first time the Romney camp has insisted that it is not beholden to the standards it expects the Obama campaign to follow. For the better part of a year, Romney has hammered Obama over the “net” jobs lost on his watch, to paint him as a job destroyer, a metric that factors the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost at the start of Obama’s term, before his policies took effect. Yet Romney advisers have argued, with no apparent sense of irony, that his own record should not be judged by one net jobs number.

Call out the lies right in your headlines - The Plum Line - The Washington Post

[jeffkrol]

The Associated Press: FACT CHECK: Ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech

FACT CHECK: Ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech

[GeneV]

Every four years, I wish the parties would go back to picking candidates in private conventions where delegates meet to select the best candidate possible. These multi-day televised infomercials do more harm than good. Paul Ryan's speech was one lie or misleading statement after another (including blaming the President for plant closings in 2008), but I am sure the Democrats will find someone to match him in this contest of prevarication.

You can't actually pick a candidate on TV. My modest proposal is to do away with presidential primaries and go back to the convention. Primaries are expensive, and are working out to favor big donors and fundraisers. They also seem to be decided by the hard core of the party--which is what happens in a convention--who then try to please the craziest of the party. Months after the decision is made, we cap this process off with several days of self-congratulation and coronation. I wonder what kind of grand set the President will have this year?

[JohnInIndy]

Every four years, I wish the parties would go back to picking candidates in private conventions where delegates meet to select the best candidate possible. These multi-day televised infomercials do more harm than good. Paul Ryan's speech was one lie or misleading statement after another (including blaming the President for plant closings in 2008), but I am sure the Democrats will find someone to match him in this contest of prevarication.

You can't actually pick a candidate on TV. My modest proposal is to do away with presidential primaries and go back to the convention. Primaries are expensive, and are working out to favor big donors and fundraisers. They also seem to be decided by the hard core of the party--which is what happens in a convention--who then try to please the craziest of the party. Months after the decision is made, we cap this process off with several days of self-congratulation and coronation. I wonder what kind of grand set the President will have this year?

Yeah but Obama's reign has been one lie or misleading statement after another.

You didn't build that business.
Wanna bet?
Government sure didn't do it for me.

I'm John In Indy and I approved this message.

[GeneV]

Attributing that statement to the president is misleading in itself.

[JohnInIndy]

Attributing that statement to the president is misleading in itself.

How so?
Here's the transcript of the speech. You saying he didn't say it?

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” he said. “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

[jeffkrol]

How so?
Here's the transcript of the speech. You saying he didn't say it?

HERE is an example.. get out of your box.............

"I'm conservative as hell," Dan Steward, the former Mitchell Energy geologist whose company pioneered shale gas in Texas, told us. But when asked about the role of government, Steward told us, "They did a hell of a lot of work, and I can't give them enough credit for that. [The Department of Energy] started it, and other people took the ball and ran with it. You cannot diminish DOE's involvement."

Steward said the government directly or indirectly supported Mitchell energy every step of the way. "[The government] helped us to evaluate how much gas was there and evaluate its critical properties," he explained. "They helped us with our first horizontal well. They helped us with pressure build-ups. And we worked with them on crack mapping."

The Breakthrough Institute - New Investigation Finds Decades of Government Funding Behind Shale Revolution

[GeneV]

How so?
Here's the transcript of the speech. You saying he didn't say it?

Read the quote you just posted and watch the video. He didn't say you didn't build a business. He said you didn't build roads and bridges.

The same kind of misrepresentation is played out with the "I like to fire people" quote from Romney.

[jeffkrol]

Read the quote you just posted and watch the video. He didn't say you didn't build a business. He said you didn't build roads and bridges.

The same kind of misrepresentation is played out with the "I like to fire people" quote from Romney.

Actually I think he does like to fire people..................

full quote:

"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me," Romney said at a Monday breakfast in New Hampshire, when talking about health care. "You know, if someone doesn't give me a good service that I need, I want to say, 'I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.'"

I'm not feeling the love..............
Mitt Romney: "I like being able to fire people" for bad service - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Still trying to wrap my head around this one............

"I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them," he said.