Romney pollster: We don't need no stinkin' factcheckers
Barb ShellyNow hear this. The Romney campaign is not going to be bossed around by fact checkers.
So said Neil Newhouse, Romney’s pollster. Specifically, according to this story by Buzzfeed, he said, “Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs,” and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”
Such is the unfortunate state of information today. Everything, it seems, is fungible. If someone establishes that something is factually inaccurate, or even a blatant lie, you simply accuse the fact checkers of bias.
What’s prompting this discussion is Romney’s television ad that accuses President Barack Obama of “gutting” the work requirements for welfare recipients.
Let’s leave aside, for now, the sheer cynicism of raising welfare as an issue in this presidential campaign. We’re trying to climb out of an economic hole caused in part by unparalleled greed among financial executives and other very wealthy people, and welfare recipients are the problem? Please.
The key point is that Romney’s accusation is factually untrue. The Obama administration hasn’t diminished the work requirements of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. Rather, it heeded the requests of some governors, including Republicans, who asked that states be allowed to propose better ways to administer the law. That’s a very Republican idea — except when the Obama administration initiates it.
Romney has been called out on this ad by every reputable fact-checking service. They’ve awarded it “four Pinocchios,” “pants on fire,” and other designations indicating that this is a whopper of a lie. But hey, in the parallel reality of the Romney campaign, the problem is not the ad; it’s the fact checkers.
The Democrats are not pure in this arena. An ad by an outside group that suggested a remote link between the death of a Kansas City steelworker’s wife for lack of health insurance and Romney’s management of Bain Capital was farfetched and denounced as false or mostly inaccurate by the fact checkers.
The difference is that Obama said he didn’t agree with the ad, and it only aired briefly. The deceptive welfare ad is a product of Romney’s own campaign, and he is sticking with it through thick and false. It’s hard to respect that kind of intransigence.
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoI guess I missed the blog posting from you ms. shelly debunking the big 0 pac ad saying Romney killed the steel worker’s wife.
Oh, that’s right, it was the big 0’s side, so all is “fair and factual” coming from them, isn’t it ms. shelly?
You libs are soooooooooooooooooooo predictable anymore….
Your righteous idignation is laughable.
Phil Cardarella
8 months, 3 weeks agoBarb, Barb… You just do not understand.
Dwelling in a reality-based universe has warped your thought processes. You believe there is such a thing as objective reality.
Silly rabbit!
You need to watch FOX News more, and learn to appreciate the true subjectivity of “facts”.
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoMentioning the steel worker ad weeks AFTER IT RAN by the way, doesn’t count….
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agonow you are starting to talk some sense phil
Phil Cardarella
8 months, 3 weeks agoBy the way, the Pro-Obama commercial did NOT accuse Mitt of killing the woman — only of killing the business the husband worked for. Which was FACTUALLY accurate. Bain made a bunch of money killing the business — while Mitt was the CEO & sole shareholder of Bain.
Because Mitt’s PR folks are good at their job, they successfully portrayed the ad — which ran only a few times before it was pulled as inept — as what it was not — focusing on the non-charge of killing the wife to divert attention from the actual issue of his vulture capitalism.
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agonice “legal” touch to the facts phil…
As expected!
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoHow about the one accusing Romeny of being a felon phil? What’s the “legal” wordage for that one?
Patrick T. Condon
8 months, 3 weeks agoUh, Phil - Romeny left Bain in 1999. Bain acquired GST in 2001. Oops.
And the guy who was running Bain in 2001 - Jon Lavine. He happens to be an Obama bundler.
Mr. Soptic was the focus of the ad you spoke of. His wife died in 2006…and she had health insurance through her employer. Nice Kabucki dance, though.
So at the end of the day, Obama does not have to factcheck because he continues to get a pass from the media. He owns them. Romney, well - the deck is stacked. So he sticks his finger in the eye of his agitators resulting in ‘outrage’. Good move on his part.
Kent Mueller
8 months, 3 weeks agoPhil, you should learn what vulture capitalism is before you make that accusation. Plenty of Democrats have said Bain was and is not a venture capitalist. For once, those Democrats are right.
How do you account for the fact that the Armco mill was slated for closure unless they found a buyer. Bain kept GST going for 8 more years, providing Mr. Soptic with a job. GST was one of over 30 similar steel mills that went out of business due to China dumping steel into the US.
Phil, you aren’t even close on this one.
Steven Fetter
66223
8 months, 3 weeks agoGood point Mr. Close. The Fourth Estate should be skeptical of all politicians views. Instead, we find a group think that even the former head of the KC Star says is prevalent at the esteemed NY Times.
Hence, when a reduction in the rate of increase is called a cut, the GOP is labeled as mean spirited, uncaring, ultra conservative. A Democrat can run a “hard hitting” campaign, a Republican is called out on negative campaigning. How many far-left monikers are attached to even the most liberal of politicians by the press?
Do your job and quit being an apologist for the Democratic party.
I wish that the networks would run a crawler under each candidates ads & appearances with a moment to moment fact check or like the Post does with a little Pinocchio who’s nose grew and shrunk as the candidate spoke. Even better make the candidate’s nose grow & shrink as they go from half truth, to omission , to outright whopper. We could even get the kids to watch dumbocracy in action. The truth is available if you care to look.
Fact is most voters don’t ever check the truth which is why the candidates go on lying to them.
and Patrick since we’re on the subject for the record … “In 1993, Bain acquired the Armco Worldwide Grinding System steel plant in Kansas City, Missouri and merged it with its steel plant in Georgetown, South Carolina to form GST Steel. The Kansas City plant had a strike in 1997 and Bain closed the plant in 2001 laying off 750 workers when it went into bankruptcy. The South Carolina plant closed in 2003”
I knew people that worked there and saw Bain’s handywork first hand.
Mark Hastert
8 months, 3 weeks agoThis is off topic but I just heard that we’ve lost one of our own. Tom Ryan has died. His intelligence and clarity will be sorely missed.
Patrick T. Condon
8 months, 3 weeks agoOkay - was there anything that I posted that was incorrect?
Kent Mueller
8 months, 3 weeks agoPhil, if you don’t think the point of that ad was to infer that Romney caused the death of Soptic’s wife, then I have several bridges I would let you choose from.
I know you aren’t naive, so play it straight. That ad was about very little other than the stupid lie that Romney’s hands are dirty with the lady’s death.
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoNot in “lawyer-land” Kent…..
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoYou have to remember Kent, this party had a leader who debated the meaning of the word IS.
This was after getting “serviced” in The Oval Office and getting caught in his lies… “I did not have sex with that women, Ms. Lewinsky”… that still has to be one of the great quotes, later proven false, of all times. Of course, phil , the lawyer, doesn’t equate oral sex with sex, but he probably also debates the meaning of the word IS….
Mark Hastert
8 months, 3 weeks ago“Do your job and quit being an apologist for the Democratic party.”
Somebody owes us an apology for the Republican Party, please!
The problem with being an extremist is you don’t know you’re an extremist. Republicans need a benchmark by which to judge themselves, say Ronald Reagan. Then if they would compare their current crop of leaders to the sainted Ronnie they could see just how far they’ve gone astray. He compromised to make law, tripled the national debt, raised taxes numerous times, he would be an apostate to today’s crowd. Noquist would be calling him a RINO. Poor RR would have been “primaried” and sent back to the old actors home before he could say “there you go again”. .. and there he went.
Kent Mueller
8 months, 3 weeks agoMark…..and JFK would be a better fit in today’s Republican Party than in today’s ultra left Democratic Party.