How Romney Gets Away With So Many Lies

[Liberal_in_LA]

Presumably the Romney campaign continues its false claims because they’re effective. But this raises a more basic question: How can they remain effective when they’ve been so overwhelmingly discredited by the media?

The answer is the Republican Party has developed three means of bypassing the mainstream media and its fact-checkers.

The first is by repeating big lies so often in TV spots – financed by a mountain of campaign money – that the public can no longer recall (if it ever knew) that the mainstream media and its fact-checkers have found them to be lies.

The second is by discrediting the mainstream media – asserting it’s run by “liberal elites” that can’t be trusted to tell the truth. “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans,” Newt Gingrich charged at a Republican debate last January, in what’s become a standard GOP attack line.

The third is by using its own misinformation outlets – led by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his yell-radio imitators, book publisher Regnery, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, along with a right-wing blogosphere – to spread the lies, or at least spread doubt about what’s true.

Together, these three mechanisms are creating a parallel Republican universe of Orwellian dimension – where anything can be asserted, where pollsters and political advisers are free to create whatever concoction of lies will help elect their candidate, and where “fact-checkers” are as irrelevant and intrusive as is the truth.

Democracy cannot thrive in such a place. To the contrary, history teaches that this is where demagogues take root.

Read more: http://robertreich.org/post/30413604638#ixzz24zALtrGt

[phantom power]

1. Here is why:

Why (and How) Romney is Playing the Race Card
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-election/why-and-how-romney-is-playing-the-race-card-20120829?print=true

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. Per Ann Romney - Mitt's "integrity is golden"

[icarusxat]

8. as golden as Seamus' pee from the roof

[socialindependocrat]

3. Today, the 4 MSNBC kids were questioning a young Repuke...

and he came out with the Obama stole $816B from Medicare and gave it to another group.

They had to jump on him 3 times and tell him it wasn't true and still he wanted to continue.

They hae been taught to push the lies becuase they sound so good to them and they want to keep telling people.

What a bunch of loosers!

It's going to be so sweet seeing them loose the election!!

[siligut]

4. And it has been in the making for some time

Thank you for the link.

[jsmirman]

5. I've been saying this since Bush in 2000

their strategy is not exactly complex.

[Curmudgeoness]

6. And there are a few other reasons that I can think of.

Like the use of emails with no credibility and even less fact.

Or how about this one---a wingnut who I have email discussions with has told me that there are NO online fact checking sites that are credibile. None. Nada. There is just no way to find truth for them unless it is in an email written by a sociopathic lunatic.

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

7. Loud lies, quiet retractions.

This has been an approach for a long time. The lie gets more media attention than the retraction, correction, or rebuttal. The fact that "two sides" ended up being presented helps confuse things in the public mind, as well.

[nanabugg]

9. He gets away with it because the media allows it. nt

[hay rick]

15. Complicity.

No other explanation required.

[NBachers]

10. By the time one lie is exposed, three more whoppers have pushed it into the background

[NRaleighLiberal]

11. One of the faults of human beings. Lies, when repeated enough times, become truth.

As I've said it a zillion times here, it is the basis of advertising.

So your three means produce reliable results.

[MariaM83]

12. a certain percentage of the population is just irredeemably stupid -- and full of hate nt

[moondust]

13. "I want to believe."

Hungry audience of bigots, plutocrats, theocrats, and brainwashed imbeciles who don't care about the facts or the truth.

Somewhere in the fires of Hell...Goebbels is giggling.

[hay rick]

14. I see Fox News at the gym.

I don't voluntarily watch it, but it's always on one of the overhead tvs- I see the picture, but I don't hear the words. Today, Megyn Kelly was talking to somebody and I assume the subject, or one of the subjects, was the lying welfare-without-work ads. I got that from the text under the talking heads: "Romney/Ryan campaign accused of sending 'coded messages' to certain voters."

I couldn't hear the dialogue but I think I got the gist. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. Here's what I got with the sound off:

The Romney campaign has never said anything about lazy black people driving welfare Cadillacs. They are not trying to appeal to racist white people- they know they're voting for R/R anyway. The Romney campaign does not send "KKKODED MESSAGES"!

[nightscanner59]

17. consider membership at another gym?

The idea that businesses want to push their political agenda onto the public makes me ill.
http://www.turnofffox.org/

[hay rick]

20. There are a dozen tvs overhead and only one is on Fox News.

Mostly I spend my time on the bike reading my Kindle. If I was interested I could watch another channel. I occasionally monitor the Fox News tv on the principle that it is important to keep track of the enemy.

[magic59]

16. Hundreds of millions of PAC dollars can make the world flat

and the moon made of cheese. Americans are too doped up or stupid to think for themselves, they let money do all the thinking for them.

[zeemike]

18. Yep you nailed it.

No need for me to say more.

[xtraxritical]

19. Kicked and recommended.