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By Ann Werner September 8, 2012 Addicting Info
Some may recall the Pants On Fire George W. Bush doll that Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream put out in 2004 to illustrate the lies of the Bush administration. I own one and it still hangs proudly from my bookcase in my home office. However, the torch has been passed, and passed in a big way. I will have to remove the cowboy boots and hat, replace them with wingtips and add a bit of gray at the temples, maybe trade in the duds for a Brooks Brothers suit, and paste a picture of Mitt Romney’s face over the one on my Pants On Fire doll because Mitt has left George in the dust. In fact, Mitt has left every lying candidate this country has ever seen in the dust.
Fred Clark is an evangelical blogger with some heavy-duty religious credentials, and that adds a particular gravitas to his August 29 blog detailing 533 lies told by Mitt Romney in 30 weeks. That’s right, 533 verifiable, checkable lies told by a candidate running for the top job in the country. To be fair, Mr. Clark isn’t the person who compiled the list. That task was accomplished by Steve Benen, and Benen is cited as the source in Clark’s blog. But Mr. Clark took the time to go through each of Mr. Benen’s articles, starting with the first salvo on January 6, 2012 in the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal Blog and wrapping up with the August 17, 2012 piece written for the Maddow Blog.
Here is the list provided in Clark’s article: 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.
Romney pollster Neil Newhouse famously proclaimed “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” This has proven to be true. Because even though Romney’s pants are ablaze, he continues to repeat and repeat and repeat the same lies over and over and over again. He and the Republican Party are counting on the until now proven fact that if one repeats a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Even when it’s still a lie. And they just don’t care.
In his blog, Mr. Clark invites scrutiny and then allows that some will pooh-pooh the assertions and wriggle around the lie to stretch it into something that resembles a weak imitation of the truth. However, as he points out, all of the lies cannot be whitewashed and at least half of those listed just can’t be explained away. And yet, because there’s always an and yet, those too will continue to be repeated and defended by people who refuse to see the truth. That refusal is evident when one examines the comments to Mr. Clark’s article.
You might wonder what lies Romney has told since week 30, so I went looking for them. An additional 83 lies brings the grand total as of September 7 to 616 and still counting. Thank you, Mr. Benin, for doing such a great job! XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII
And thank, you Fred Clark, for being an upstanding man who practices what he preaches, namely to keep the Ten Commandments, the ninth of which is Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Now if only Mitt Romney would get the message.
