Yesterday, the Sunday morning talk shows were filled with Democrats touting their new excuse (they always have excuses) for President Obama\u2019s inability to engage during last week\u2019s debate: Mitt Romney lied. \u00a0Governor Romney\u2019s brazen misstatements, they said, left the president so overwhelmed with disbelief that he found himself all but speechless.<\/p>\n
If you are like me, this defense leaves you nearly speechless.<\/p>\n
After all, Mr. Obama\u2019s Denver performance was not measurably off past standards. His voice was strong, his arguments clear, his delivery smooth with hardly a stumbled word or a grammatical flaw. \u00a0So far as he went into data, he appeared well briefed. \u00a0The only difference from the past was that this time, unlike any other time since he stepped on the national stage, he faced an opponent equally articulate and better informed.<\/p>\n
Still, rather than acknowledging a bad night and moving on, for the past week we have heard Democratic excuses ranging from a) the president was weary carrying the weight of the world to z) the mile-high city\u2019s air was too thin. Finally they settled on the \u201clie\u201d line.<\/p>\n
Not that it was new. \u00a0All year one of their tactics has been to shout \u201clies\u201d whenever a Republicans speaks, no matter the speaker, subject or substance. \u00a0The most notable example of this stratagem came during Paul Ryan\u2019s speech accepting the GOP vice presidential nomination, when a senior Democrat tweeted something like \u201cthis is all lies.\u201d \u00a0Immediately the MSMosphere had its story and continued to run with it for days following. \u00a0Meanwhile, when conservative bloggers and journalists finally nailed down the specifics on which Mr. Ryan was supposedly dissembling, every statement turned out to be clearly, unambiguously true. \u00a0But, hey, it worked once. \u00a0Why not try it again? \u00a0So \u201cRyan lied\u201d became \u201cRomney lied.\u201d \u00a0Once more at least some in the poodle press performed tricks on command.<\/p>\n
No poodle has been faster to sit, roll over or jump flips than\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist and economist turned ideologue Paul Krugman. Yesterday on ABC\u2019s\u00a0This Week,<\/em>\u00a0Dr. Krugman was especially aggressive in charging that Romney lied in the debate, in particular cutting off Republicans whenever one tried to make the simple point that despite Friday\u2019s jobs report, the president\u2019s economic strategy was still, in terms of employment and growth, a failure.<\/p>\n Perhaps to reinforce this televised defense, Dr. Krugman posted on his blog today a chart titled \u201cAll employees: Total Nonfarm (PAYEMS)\u201d (see here:\u00a0http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/23qv5r<\/a>\u00a0; scroll down). The chart tracks total U.S. Employment from later 2007 to the present. \u00a0It shows that the number of people in the U.S. with jobs is higher today than at its pre-recession peak. \u00a0Krugman\u2019s source is the research department of the St. Louis Fed. \u00a0I went to the St. Louis Fed\u2019s website this morning. \u00a0I found another chart, also titled \u201cAll Employees: Total nonfarm (PAYEMS)\u201d (see here:\u00a0http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/8fccc7j<\/a>\u00a0). \u00a0And I got a surprise.<\/p>\n The Fed\u2019s posting presents data from the 1930s to the present. \u00a0Otherwise the two are identical, except for one detail. \u00a0Where the Krugman chart shows employment today up from the pre-recession peak, the St. Louis Fed chart shows it significantly down. \u00a0Did Dr. Krugman lie or was he simply mistaken?<\/p>\n My point is bigger than Paul Krugman. \u00a0Again and again this year, Obama surrogates and media supporters have insisted that the Romney camp was dishonestly representing this or that fact or position, only to be refuted within hours or days.<\/p>\n The tweet during the Ryan RNC speech is the best-known example, but hardly the only one.<\/p>\n In her speech at the Democratic convention, to discredit Governor Romney\u2019s contention that he will champion Israel\u2019s security, Debbie Wasserman Shultz said, \u201cWe know and I\u2019ve heard no less than [Israeli] Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.\u201d \u00a0In response, the ambassador has released this statement: \u201cI categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n Then there was the White House Communications director\u2019s tweeted charge that Republicans were lying about Mr. Obama returning the Churchill bust to the British Embassy at the start of his presidency \u2013 only to retract the accusations hours later in the face of an avalanche Internet documentation to the contrary.<\/p>\n In short, even as they level the charge of \u201clies\u201d, the administration and its allies are careless (at best) with facts and the truth. They are intent not on winning the national debate but on \u201cdisqualifying\u201d (as the current phrase has it) the Romney-Ryan ticket — not a pretty strategy, nor an honorable one.<\/p>\n The question now is, will it work?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, the Sunday morning talk shows were filled with Democrats touting their new excuse (they always have excuses) for President Obama\u2019s inability to engage during last week\u2019s debate: Mitt Romney lied. \u00a0Governor Romney\u2019s brazen misstatements, they said, left the president so overwhelmed with disbelief that he found himself all but speechless. If you are like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[90,77,60,89,55],"class_list":["post-1347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicalcommentary-campaign-2012","tag-debate","tag-election-2012","tag-obama","tag-paul-krugman","tag-romney"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1347"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1374,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347\/revisions\/1374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}