Obama Lies While Accusing the Romney Campaign of Lying
4:51 PM, SEP 1, 2012 • BY MARK HEMINGWAY
If you want a near perfect encapsulation of how the Obama campaign is leaning on incompetent partisans masquerading as "independent" media fact checking organizations to do their dirty work, I strongly encourage you to read today's article in the New York Times, "Obama Team Sharpens Attacks on Rivals’ Character." While the article is a far too credulous regarding the fact checker response to Paul Ryan's speech, it does contain this gem:
Mr. Obama this week, for the first time, entered the fray. Campaigning on Tuesday on college campuses in Iowa and Colorado, he told thousands of supporters not to believe the opposition’s attacks because, “how do I put this nicely? They will just fib.” On Wednesday in Charlottesville, Va., he ramped up his complaint, winning applause from the estimated 6,500 people.
“Sometimes they just make things up. But they’ve got a bunch of folks who can write $10 million checks, and they’ll just keep on running them,” he said. “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.’”
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.”
Emphasis added. According to the New York Times, the president appears to be lying in the process of accusing the Romney campaign of lying. It will be interesting to see if media fact checkers attempt to spin this statement.
