It’s weird, really. If Barack Obama is as bad a president as the Republicans would have you believe, it should be pretty easy to run against him by just being straightforward. So why do Republicans keep lying through their teeth?
The welfare ads – everyone who has looked at them says they’re false. The $716 billion in Medicare “cuts” – another falsehood.
And then Paul Ryan, in the biggest speech of his life, blames Obama for the closing of a General Motors plant in his district that GM announced it would close, and laid off 95% of the workers, during the waning months of the George W. Bush administration. No, I am not making this up.
And that wasn’t the only whopper he told. You can read the fact-checks all over the place – from the lefties like Steve Benen on the Maddow show, to the centrist Dems at The New Republic, to the opinionistas at WaPo, to the uncategorizable libertarians like Dave Weigel at Slate, to the non-ideological crowd at AP, even to the righties at Fox News. Everyone is calling out Paul Ryan for just making sh!t up last night.
Everyone, that is, except the Boston Globe, which in its lengthy write-up of Ryan’s speech bizarrely does not even mention any of the numerous falsehoods that it contained. Hey, I’m no journalist, but when a major-party candidate for vice president includes several outright lies in the biggest speech of his career, that strikes me as newsworthy. Maybe the J-schools teach different.
Discuss
26 Comments . Leave a comment below.I’m sure he’ll pick it up.
His is the only campaign coverage worth the time spent watching.
Samantha Bee’s segment on the GOP platform was absolutely brilliant.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/29/msnbc_hosts_vs_scott_walker_on_auto_bailout_.html
The question is, did Obama tell the workers at this plant that he would keep the plant open and jobs secured? Is that how he got their votes in 2008? So sick of politicians telling people what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear. What next, Obama will say he will stop the rising oceans and cool the planet?
What kind of person decides to pursue a hobby stirring up shit?
He was campaigning on the the auto company bailouts, which were supported by Republicans when Bush was president, but thereafter opposed.
The plant closed after the election but before Obama took office, during which time Republicans were deciding that they opposed further loans to the industry.
The craziness is that the GOP vigorously opposed the loan programs, and has purged those in its caucus who supported it. Which means that the GOP supported not only the closure of the Wisconsin plant, but every other one as well.
At this point the GOP policy with expect to nearly everything is set only by what can benefit them in the next 5 seconds, and is completely incoherent as a result.
National Review’s Henry Payne explains more fully how candidate Obama vowed to those workers in February 2008 that if he became president, prosperity would be theirs. That promise, like everything else with this administration, was fantastical smoke and mirrors:
“(But) I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this (General Motors) plant will be here for another hundred years,” said Barack Obama in February, 2008, promising UAW workers at GM’s giant, troubled plant in Janesville, Wisc., that he would watch over them if elected president. “When I talk about real change that will make a real difference in the lives of working families, it’s not just the poll-tested rhetoric of a political campaign. It’s the cause of my life. And you can be sure that it will be the cause of my presidency from the very first day I take office.”
As Deval would say…..”Just words”
… then why aren’t you more upset at Paul Ryans mendacity?
NO Substance, just Blah, Blah, Blah. You are so predictably boring.
just wondering.
Or is that not his responsibility? He promised to look after them, nothing about “you’re on your own” if you lose your job when Bush is POTUS. Technically, Obama has failed them. Too bad he funded Solyndra and not found these guys and gals opportunity at their old plant.
If Obama had done anything, like a stimulus package, the Party of Hell No would have blocked it, if he had done it own his own, he would have been “defiling the constitution”.
Your Boy Wonder got caught in a massive lie, accept it, you team is worse than Used Car Salesmen.
Perhaps Ryan can go into business selling Snuggies on late night infomercials after he is crushed in November. Or Garden Weasels (since he is such a weasel himself).
why, over the last 9 years or so, I have gone from being a Republican-leaning independent to an independent that has nothing at all but contempt for Republicans.
It is your collective ability to stick your head so very far up your ass, as is nicely demonstrated by this little vignette.
Bush started the GM bailouts, and got some short term loans through the lame duck Congress. Then, once Republicans realized that Obama would benefit from the program, they opposed it, which meant a closer call for the companies, which all did some rather major cost-cutting as a result, and eventually wound up using the bankruptcy system because the Republicans deadlocked the government. Indeed, these very two guys
Now, Republicans want to support the bailouts, but blame the administration for not getting more? They want to cut Medicare, unless Democrats can be seen to have made a cut, and then they support it? They support Medicare, absolutely and unconditionally, for people who are 66, but if someone who is 65 gets those benefits, it would be a Stalinist gulag?
It is as if I borrowed your car, and promised not to crash it, and you took it back and crashed it, deliberately, and then said: well, you said it would crash. Words mean things..
Horseshit.
In 2012 Republicans are either stupid or utterly unscrupulous liars. They certainly are no longer “conservative” except to the extent that conservative means “thinks hurricanes are God’s punishment for gay marriage.”
You can buy all the bullshit you want from the Limbaugh show, if you are stupid enough to eat that shit. But don’t come here and pretend it is a “conservative” viewpoint. It isn’t. It is idiocy, and idiocy is not a viewpoint. Idiocy is market share for Limbaugh, and little more.
Well said, CMD, well said
Damn, I wish I had said that…
A fine rant, with which I enthusiastically agree.
Have you ever considered a career in law? I think you might have an aptitude for it …
Feel the burn.
That was good.
Now I am blushing.
If I could edit, I would complete the sentence in P3: “Indeed, these very two guys advocating allowing all GM plants to close.” Someone with power may wish to add that to the other post.
You won’t love me so much if I am foolish again next week and linger on the DNC before surfing on over to White Collar on USA.
… advocated letting everyone fold. He’s taken more positions than the Kama Sutra, wanting to have it both ways on every issue.
I believe Romney wanted GM and Chrysler to go to bankruptcy first, then a lifeline would be given after the normal course of BK. but what happened? Non-union workers and bond holders got the shaft while the unions were repaid their past loyalty. It is just not fair, that’s all.
That explanation doesn’t even remotely hold water.
It is clear that you don’t care even remotely about whether the Romney camp is truthful or not. You just care whether they say what you want to hear.
Anyway, what do you think is the smoking gun in Romney’s taxes?
the same gun in Obama’s college transcripts.
Seriously, I think it is “wealth envy” that’s the smoking gun. He doesn’t like to brag about it, much like all the charity he does, under the radar.
Talk about Apples and Oranges. More like Apples and Troll Droppings.
Like giving to predatory anti-gay hate groups like Massachusetts Family Institute and the Becket Fund. Wow, he is such a “Wonderful” person.
Wow, where can I learn more? I am “SO” voting Republican this year, you bet-cha!
Please by all means continue to bring it up. It is an imbecilic tactic.
Romney’s taxes on the other hand people *do* care about. If Obama released his college transcripts and he got Cs, no one would care one bit. If Romney releases his 2009 tax returns, he loses the election for sure. So what’s in them?
So if we just cut teachers pay by $716B, the kids will get the same amount of education?
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