The Republican National Convention is now over, but the race for the presidency isn\u2019t over by a long shot.<\/p>\n
The Obama campaign spared not a moment to respond to Paul Ryan\u2019s and Mitt Romney\u2019s speeches.\u00a0 Yet its reply was at least as negative in character as it accused Ryan\u2019s and Romney\u2019s speeches of being.\u00a0 Rather than speak to the substance of their rivals\u2019 remarks, Barack Obama continued the same assault against the Republican candidates\u2019 characters that he has been waging for months.<\/p>\n
In fact, even before Ryan and Romney gave their speeches to the RNC, Obama tried to undermine their credibility.\u00a0 On Tuesday, he cautioned audiences at college campuses in Iowa and Colorado against believing anything that his opponents say.\u00a0 \u201cThey will just fib,\u201d Obama stated.<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cSometimes they just make things up.\u201d But this they can afford to do, Obama explained, because \u201cthey\u2019ve got a bunch of folks who can write $10 million checks, and they\u2019ll just keep on running them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Obama, such is his opponents\u2019 disregard for the truth that they are brazen enough to explicitly express their disdain for it. He remarked: \u201cI mean, somebody was challenging one of their ads\u2014they made it up\u2014about work and welfare.\u00a0 And every outlet said this is just not true.\u00a0 And they were asked about it and they said\u2014one of their campaign people said, \u2018We won\u2019t have the fact-checkers dictate our campaign. We will not let the truth get in the way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For all of the accusations of dishonesty that he hurls against his rivals, Obama should take care to attend to the boulder in his own eye.\u00a0 Not only have the very fact-checkers that he cites debunked several of his own ads, Obama\u2019s account of the Romney campaign\u2019s response to fact-checkers is dishonest.<\/p>\n
Neil Newhouse is the Romney campaign\u2019s pollster.\u00a0 While Newhouse did indeed say that his team refuses to permit fact-checkers to \u201cdictate\u201d their strategies, he never said anything about refusing to accommodate truth. <\/em>What he actually said is that the so-called \u201cfact-checkers\u201d are as ridden with their own prejudices and biases as is anyone else. \u201cThese fact-checkers come to those ads with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s chief strategist, the notorious David Axelrod, said on Thursday\u2014before Romney\u2019s speech\u2014that Romney and Ryan have supplied the public with nothing more or less than \u201ca compendium of demonstrable lies.\u201d\u00a0 The President\u2019s critics\u2014and fact-checkers\u2014can say the same thing about him.\u00a0<\/p>\n In not so many words, they have<\/em> said the same thing about him.<\/p>\n Politics is a dirty sport, it is true, and politicians can be expected to hurl insults and untruths.\u00a0 However, it is not for nothing that the Obama campaign has been charged by its critics with engaging in ruthless, unscrupulous Chicago-style politics.<\/p>\n From the outset of this campaign season, even prior to Romney\u2019s victory in the Republican presidential primaries, Obama made it clear that his sole objective would be to \u201cdestroy\u201d Romney.\u00a0\u00a0 At this time last year, Politico <\/em>first reported that \u201cObama\u2019s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president\u2019s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney\u2019s character and business background [.]\u201d\u00a0 It quotes \u201ca prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House\u201d who said that \u201cunless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney.\u201d<\/p>\n When it is considered that Obama is closing in on the completion of his first term in office and the economy over which he presides is in worst condition than the one he inherited, it makes sense that he should engage in the politics of personal destruction.\u00a0 But the allegations of dishonesty that he makes against Romney are at risk of falling flat because of his own strategy.<\/p>\n The lion\u2019s share of his resources Obama has invested in depicting Romney as a \u201cvulture capitalist.\u201d\u00a0 As everyone now knows, Romney was the CEO of Bain Capital, a private equity firm, for several years. Obama has been relentless in his campaign to fashion an image of Romney that would recall Michael Douglas\u2019s Wall Street <\/em>character, Gordon Gekko.\u00a0 Gekko was a money hungry gazillionaire whose insistence upon putting \u201cprofits before people\u201d eventually landed him in prison for two decades.<\/p>\n Yet the truth is that there isn\u2019t a shred of evidence to substantiate Obama\u2019s contention that Romney is anything at all like Oliver Stone\u2019s villain. In fact, several distinguished Obama supporters <\/em>have said as much.<\/p>\n From Newark Mayor Corey Booker to former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, from former President Bill Clinton to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Democratic politicians repudiated Obama\u2019s assaults against Romney and Bain Capital with all of the readiness and forcefulness mustered by Republicans.\u00a0 They all recognized Bain to be a good company and Clinton went so far as to commend Romney for his \u201csterling\u201d business record.<\/p>\n Even Obama-friendly territories like ABC, CNN, and the fact-checker for The Washington Post <\/em>couldn\u2019t refrain from exposing the bogus nature of Obama\u2019s charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n None of this stopped the Obama campaign, though.\u00a0 More recently, one of its SuperPAC committees released an ad in which it held Romney culpable for the death of a steel worker\u2019s wife.\u00a0 According to the ad, Bain closed a steel factory while Romney was at its helm.\u00a0 Because of this, the employee no longer had medical insurance to care properly for his terminally ill wife.<\/p>\n In spite of being over the top on its face, the ad is off for another reason: Romney wasn\u2019t even at Bain during the time in question.<\/p>\n A couple of weeks ago, Vice President Joe Biden went beyond linking Romney to unjustified homicide to associating him with slavery.\u00a0<\/p>\n Addressing a largely black audience inVirginia, Biden said that Romney\u2019s economic policies would have the effect of putting \u201cy\u2019all back in chains.\u201d<\/p>\n Biden later said that he was talking about the effects that the\u00a0business-friendly policies of Romney\u00a0will have on the middle class.\u00a0 But given the audience to whom he made his remarks and the contrived drawl with which he made them, it was clear to all who were paying attention what he was trying to imply.<\/p>\n Obama never held the moral high ground.\u00a0 But even if he did, he has long since ceded it.<\/p>\n originally\u00a0published at The\u00a0New America\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Republican National Convention is now over, but the race for the presidency isn\u2019t over by a long shot. The Obama campaign spared not a moment to respond to Paul Ryan\u2019s and Mitt Romney\u2019s speeches.\u00a0 Yet its reply was at least as negative in character as it accused Ryan\u2019s and Romney\u2019s speeches of being.\u00a0 Rather…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n