Poll-tested in every instance

Even Republicans can tell...

Mitt Romney's message people, I would guess, poll-test his convenient position changes. What they fail to poll-test is his credibility after switching yet again.

(h/t Rachel Maddow)

Invented the Internet

On behalf of the big media, Dana Milbank reports the complete and total bullshit coming from Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R-pearls of a swine) - with a dollop from Sen. John McCain (R-not a maverick). (Of course, he doesn't credit the liberal blogosphere, which has been on this story for a while.)

But tomorrow or the next day, she'll be on TV again, and no one will impugn her credibility despite her repeated willingness to justify her policy on the basis of lies.

This media laxity, not ever extended to a Democrat, is why Democrats must every day call out Republicans for their lies. The media won't help. They're too busy protecting their sources and proving they're not liberal. Democrats have to stop being polite in the face of unregenerate, unremorseful liars.

"You're well known, Gov. Brewer, to state the most breath-taking falsehoods as the basis for your immigration policy. Why should anyone believe a single word you ever say?"

The only alternative is to accept that American politics will continue to be driven by unrebutted lies.

Rejoinders

If it's coming out of Tucker Bounds's mouth, it's a lie:

"John McCain repeatedly pointed to Sen. Obama's vote in favor of higher taxes on families making just $42,000 a year, and his proposal for $860 billion in lavish new government spending which is a crushing burden on middle class families and the Main Street economy," spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement Saturday.

He might possibly slip and tell the truth by accident, but he'd never repeat the truth. The Republican message machine is about repetition, not about accuracy. Using the well-honed techniques of advertising and tobacco industry denial, they judge their attack lines only be effectiveness, not by something so retro and hoary as being true.

So, when Obama attacks McCain's middle class cred, they don't merely parry. They counter. Like Feyd-Rautha, with poison on the blade.

Democrats are really poor at this. They parry with a sound reasoned argument and think they've won. Innocents!

Every time Tucker Bounds or another of the professional liars who speak for Republicans says something like what's above, Democrats at least must counterattack against the credibility of the whole Republican message, something along these lines:

Tucker repeats yet again a proven lie about Obama's tax plan, which raises taxes on people making more than $200,000 a year. What he and the Republicans will never tell you is that the one person making $42,000 who'll see a tax increase is a teenager with a BMW whose trust fund billionaire daddy is trying to use to launder his capital gains. Republicans will never tell you the whole truth about this. Can you trust them about anything else?

Democrats should have been explicitly attacking the core credibility of Republicans for thirty years. The Republican Party message is founded on three true things:

• lower taxes for the wealthy
• gun rights
• personal responsibility for non-wealthy knocked-up women and girls

Even the last is close to a lie. Republicans would really rather retain Roe v. Wade as a perpetual burr under the fundie saddle. That's why they've moved so slowly to actually overturn it. Keeping that burr in place is why they have started to push even more extreme views that would prohibit most forms of birth control.

The rest of the Republican platform requires consistent deception of the voters, especially the part about tax cuts for the middle class that consist entirely of leftovers from the tables of the wealthy. That's why Tucky and his ilk prosper and the rest of us don't.

Romney's credibility

Mitt Romney was lying about his abortion views when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He was always anti-choice, but he knew he couldn't win with that position in Massachusetts, so he said what he had to say to get elected. He told honorific stories of his mother's pro-choice leanings even though all the evidence indicated she had held no such views. A man who would lie about his mother is truly a man who would lie about anything.

Romney also knew that he could run and win honestly in Utah but that that would be a political dead end, and he had the Presidency in mind from the very beginning. Just what America needs - another dishonest scion of a failed Republican.

In 2002, Romney did provoke Shannon O'Brien into trying to find some way to make a distinction between their views, and she made consistency of the age of consent and the age of parental consent to abortion an issue. This only made her sound extreme, even though it was perfectly reasonable. The moral of the story is to attack his credibility instead of his position.

Of course, Romney can't admit his duplicity, even though it would help him if the ardent anti-abortionists could trust his current desire to overrule Roe v. Wade. But admitting the truth would cast him as an opportunist, which of course he absolutely is.

Mitt Romney believes he is entitled to the Presidency. He does not feel obligated to sell himself truthfully.