There has already been quite a bit of commentary about the speeches at the GOP Convention last week - notably the mis-truths and downright lies peddled by the now presidential (Mitt Romney) and VP (Paul Ryan) candidates - but this piece in truthdig calls it bluntly and directly. The concern for everyone, both in the USA and beyond, is that these two men have been embraced by the GOP as their candidates and their credibility should they, Heaven-forbid, win office in November.
"I once wrote, about Gerald Ford, that an honest politician is one who lies only when he has to. Ford, a pretty straight shooter, is gone now. He has been replaced by Mitt Romney the ignorant and Paul Ryan the liar.
Last week’s Republican National Convention may be the last in the line going back to 1832, when President Andrew Jackson called a convention in Baltimore because he needed a plausible arena to bump his vice president, John C. Calhoun, in favor of a more compatible Martin Van Buren. It worked.
It doesn’t anymore. This Republican spectacle crumpled on its last night when Clint Eastwood incoherently debated a chair. The chair won.
Although Romney and his vice presidential running mate, Paul Ryan, made competent acceptance speeches—Romney probably the best he could deliver under pressure—neither could withstand the most casual fact-checking. As The New York Times editorialized: “The truth, rarely heard this week in Tampa, Fla., is that the Republicans charted a course of denial and obstruction from the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated, determined to deny him a second term by denying him any achievement, no matter what the cost to the economy….” The rhetoric for the Republican show tumbled from untruth to untruth.
One of the “whoppers,” as they were called by The Washington Post, that fact-checkers had such a field day with was Ryan’s attempt to blame President Obama for the shutdown of a huge General Motors plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis. Ryan’s point of reference was a visit Obama made to the plant during the 2008 campaign".
Continue reading here.
"I once wrote, about Gerald Ford, that an honest politician is one who lies only when he has to. Ford, a pretty straight shooter, is gone now. He has been replaced by Mitt Romney the ignorant and Paul Ryan the liar.
Last week’s Republican National Convention may be the last in the line going back to 1832, when President Andrew Jackson called a convention in Baltimore because he needed a plausible arena to bump his vice president, John C. Calhoun, in favor of a more compatible Martin Van Buren. It worked.
It doesn’t anymore. This Republican spectacle crumpled on its last night when Clint Eastwood incoherently debated a chair. The chair won.
Although Romney and his vice presidential running mate, Paul Ryan, made competent acceptance speeches—Romney probably the best he could deliver under pressure—neither could withstand the most casual fact-checking. As The New York Times editorialized: “The truth, rarely heard this week in Tampa, Fla., is that the Republicans charted a course of denial and obstruction from the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated, determined to deny him a second term by denying him any achievement, no matter what the cost to the economy….” The rhetoric for the Republican show tumbled from untruth to untruth.
One of the “whoppers,” as they were called by The Washington Post, that fact-checkers had such a field day with was Ryan’s attempt to blame President Obama for the shutdown of a huge General Motors plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis. Ryan’s point of reference was a visit Obama made to the plant during the 2008 campaign".
Continue reading here.
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