Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Romney Campaign discounts Facts, blames the messengers, Fact Checkers for Bias.

Greg Sargent wrote a great piece about what can only be described as an actual alternative reality found inside the Republican Party’s ideology. You don't have to look hard.
WP: Fact checking for thee, but not for me. Get this: The Romney campaign’s position is now that the Obama camp should pull its ads when fact checkers call them out as false — but that Romney and his advisers should feel no such constraint. This is not an exaggeration. This is really the Romney campaign’s position.

“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. “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.
Kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it. The Romney campaign will not be dictated to or controlled by facts. Look I don’t like the fact checkers either, because they never consider ideological intent, but they do uncover the FACTS.

But we were warned, and because the media at the time didn’t push back over the following ironic comments from Mitt Romney, the Republicans ran with it:
Romney’s own remarks about fact-checking and political advertising “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.”
Greg Sargent, like me, is expecting something from the media:
In this sense, the Romney campaign continues to pose a test to the news media and our political system. What happens when one campaign has decided there is literally no set of boundaries that it needs to follow when it comes to the veracity of its assertions? The Romney campaign is betting that the press simply won’t be able to keep voters informed about the disputes that are central to the campaign, in the face of the sheer scope and volume of dishonesty it uncorks daily.

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