Thursday, August 16, 2012

Romney Decries the Tactics He and GOP Use All the Time

Since the GOP primary season began, Mitt Romney has been perhaps the most challenged candidate of either party when it comes to truth and veracity.  Enter Paul Ryan who seems similarly challenged - e.g., his claims that Ayn Rand isn't/wasn't his heroine when vast amounts of evidence prove otherwise.  Now, the Democrats are belatedly calling out Romney, Ryan and others in the GOP for the liars that they are and like school yard bullies, they can't take what they regularly dish out.  Hence Romney's whining that Obama has turned the campaign into one of hate, division and discord.  I'm sorry, but is far past time that the Republicans' disingenuous lies be exposed so that the lazy media doesn't merely regurgitate GOP lies.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP whining and latest round of lies.  Oh, and as for "reuniting America," Romney's idea of that consists of robing the working class and middle class to benefit the already very wealthy.  That's not my idea of unifying the country.  Here are highlights:

The umbrage industry is working overtime this week.  Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ presidential standard-bearer, is so outraged by President Obama’s attacks that he called the president a hater: “Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America.”

Forgive me, but I’m not prepared to join this walk down Great Umbrage Street just yet. Yes, it’s ugly out there. But is this worse than four years ago, when Obama was accused by the GOP vice presidential nominee of “palling around with terrorists”? Or eight years ago, when Democratic nominee John Kerry was accused of falsifying his Vietnam War record?

What’s different this time is that the Democrats are employing the same harsh tactics that have been used against them for so long, with so much success. They have ceased their traditional response of assuming the fetal position when attacked, and Obama’s campaign is giving as good as it gets — and then some. 

Romney is in a weak position to be complaining that the other side has been mean and nasty. He won the nomination by eviscerating his rivals with negative ads and accusations, and an ad his team aired last week that falsely claimed Obama was gutting welfare-to-work requirements injected racial politics into the campaign. 

Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign manager .   .   .   .  derided the Romney side’s “faux outrage” and called the Republicans “hypocritical.”  Eight years ago, Cutter was a staffer on the Kerry campaign when the candidate was undone by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on his war record. Cutter, like other Democrats, learned a hard truth back then: Umbrage doesn’t win elections. Ruthlessness does. 

In terms of Romney, the faux outrage may be partly true - he and Ann "Marie Antoinette" Romney seem to truly believe that they are entitled to occupy the White House and feel rage that anyone questions their entitlement, not to mention calls out their lies.  Worse yet, they continue to ask what the Romneys are hiding in the tax returns.  One doesn't act like they are hiding something typically unless they ARE hiding something.  Hence, we can only conclude that there is something devastating in those tax returns.

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