A chilling half-hour

I just watched, on MSNBC, Romney-Ryan campaigning in New Hampshire. It was about 30 minutes of viewing, and a lifetime of lies. 

These boys have reconfigured the "Big Lie." If one lie can work, or so goes their theory, then 20 can work even better. What's more, diabolically mixing lies with the truth is, evidently, outmoded. Blanket lies are now altogether pure in their disingenuity. And why not? If the base is so gullible as to believe that "Obamacare" increases the national debt, then the base will surely swallow that Paul Ryan is a deficit hawk. These are but two of the roughly 20 lies I just heard.

I can hear the objection. Hey, they're politicians. And politicians lie. They're masters at it; it's what they do; Romney and Ryan are merely extending the American political tradition of twisting and distorting and lying. As far as that truism goes, true enough. But this is new. This is different. What Romney-Ryan are executing is ... evil; an evil unprecedented in the annals of even our most ignominious political history.

When Jefferson indecently assaulted Adams for monarchism, it was because there existed some element of monarchism in Adams. When the South egregiously assailed Lincoln for abolitionism, it was because there existed some element of abolitionism in Lincoln. And when Republicans went looney-tunes ballistic against the "socialist" Roosevelt during the New Deal, it was only because there was indeed a good deal of socialism in Roosevelt's policies.

With Romney and Ryan, though, there's nothing. For all their staged outrage and overwrought denunciations, there is simply no evidence of even partial substantiation. The world has not suffered American "leaderlessness," the Affordable Care Act does not balloon the deficit, Paul Ryan has in reality acted the big spender, Mitt Romney is hardly "sad and disappointed" at the Obama campaign's exclusive negativity, slashing yet more revenue and "nonessential" programs will not balance the budget. And so on. There's not a dram of truth--to any of it.

But even more than that, Mitt Romney is vividly eager to lie, even though he just as vividly disbelieves every word of it. Paul Ryan I'm not so sure about. For all the talk of his "wonkiness" and "intellectualism," he actually seems a bit slow to me. In short, he may really believe some of the rot he's spewing. Not Romney. No one can obliviously skim a quarter-billion dollars. And now, once again, Romney knows precisely what he's doing; he's as ruthless in his con artistry as any practitioner of the Big Lie has ever been.

Comments

[Jimiskin]

There is no truth in them. They have no understanding.

[Robert Lipscomb]

The point is that they are bad liars, as in unconvincing liars.

Too many liberals are flailing their arms because the MSM are relaying their lies - unedited - to a defenseless public who will be bamboozled by these guys.

Not me, not this time. These are pitifully bad con artists. There is no sinceity when they tell lies.

They remind me of John Belushi in "The Blues Brothers" on his knees with Carrie Fischer pointing a rifle at him. he tells one lie afer another (Someone stole my car ... I had a flat), all the while sneaking a peek to see if she is buying one of them - and she does.

This time, the American voter is no Carrie Fischer.

[Marc McKenzie]

@Robert Lipscomb:

"This time, the American voter is no Carrie Fischer."

One hopes, Robert. One hopes. So far, it seems that things are trending that way.