-By Warner Todd Huston
At a recent campaign stop Obama openly lied about what the Romney camp said just as he was claiming the GOP nominee’s campaign is itself filled with lies.
Obama was at a campaign stop in Charlottesville, Virginia when he unleashed an outright untruth claiming that a Romney spokesman was purposefully obviating “the truth” in the campaign. (My bold throughout)
“Sometimes they just make things up,” the President said on the stump. “I mean, somebody was challenging one of their ads — they made it up — about work and welfare. And every outlet said this is just not true. And they were asked about it and they said — one of their campaign people said, ‘We won’t have the fact-checkers dictate our campaign. We will not let the truth get in the way.'”
But Obama’s is a claim that even The New York Times cannot allow to stand.
Mr. Obama was referring, as many other critics of the Romney campaign have, to a comment that its pollster, Neil Newhouse, made to reporters at the Republican convention on Tuesday, dismissive of those faulting the campaign’s television ads. What Mr. Newhouse actually said was, “These fact-checkers come to those ads with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs. We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
Mr. Newhouse did not say, “We will not let the truth get in the way.”
That’s right, even The New York Times had to tell the real truth. Mr. Obama lied when he said that a Romney spokesman wouldn’t let truth get in the way of campaigning.
It is telling, however, that the Times buried that much needed correction at the very end of its story on Obama’s increase in attacks on Romney/Ryan, to be sure. If the situation were reversed, it is likely that the Times would have led with the lie if Romney had said it.
President Obama’s campaign has been one of the most cynical reelection campaigns in modern history. Instead of talking about his record all he and his surrogates can do is lie about the records of Romney and Ryan.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.