The main tool being used by Romney, Republicans, Faux News, and right wing talk radio is the LIE!!!! To lie is the raison d'etre for Rush Limbaugh, the head of the Republican party. Because this faction cannot tolerate having a black man as President, there is an urgency that he be replaced to restore the hegemony of white nationalism. With its adherents having mainly a Southern base, the legacy of white supremacy remains a salient force. The National Rifle Association provides a cloak for the most hyperbolic and violent of this faction. To facilitate this agenda, this extreme agenda, conservatives must lie.
The Obama presidency represents an attempt at fairness. Fairness is a fundamental American value. White nationalism is not about fairness. White nationalism is about maintaining white domination. Having a black man as president represents a challenge to white nationalist hegemony. Gaining back a white leader must be done by any means necessary, including lying. Like Limbaugh, to turn reality on its head, requires a lie. Reason is not likely to be sufficient. Rationality does not inspire passion, racist lies do!
Unfortunately, the issue on lying about Obama is not just about Romney, the person. The Republican right wing has been on this white nationalist campaign against Obama throughout his presidency. From Joe Wilson's "you lie" to Mitch McConnell's vow to make Obama a one term President, lying about Obama has been central to their narrative. The article below by Michael Cohen spells out Romney's use of the lie in his bid to defeat President Barack Obama. RGN
Romney's Bid to Become Liar-in-Chief
By Michael Cohen, Guardian UK
22 June 12
our years ago, when I was writing about the 2008 presidential campaign,
I wrote with dismay and surprise at the spate of falsehoods coming out of John McCain's campaign for president. McCain had falsely accused his opponent
Barack Obama
of supporting "comprehensive sex education" for children, and of
wanting to raise taxes on the middle class, while his running mate,
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, took
credit for opposing the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere", which she had actually supported.
At the time, such false and misleading claims from a presidential candidate seemed shocking: they crossed an unstated line in
American politics – going from the usual garden-variety campaign exaggeration to wilful lying.
Ah, those were the days … after watching
Mitt Romney run for president the past few months, he makes John McCain look like George Washington (of "I Can't Tell A Lie" fame).
Granted, presidential candidates are no strangers to
disingenuous or overstated claims; it's pretty much endemic to the
business. But Romney is doing something very different and far more
pernicious. Quite simply, the
United States
has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American
history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt
Romney.
Now, in general, those of us in the pundit class are
really not supposed to accuse politicians of lying – they mislead, they
embellish, they mischaracterize, etc. Indeed, there is natural tendency
for nominally objective reporters, in particular, to stay away from
loaded terms such as lying. Which is precisely why Romney's repeated
lies are so effective. In fact, lying is really the only appropriate
word to use here, because, well, Romney lies a lot. But that's a
criticism you're only likely to hear from partisans.
My personal favorite in Romney's cavalcade of untruths is his repeated assertion that President
Obama has apologized for America. In his book, appropriately titled "No Apologies", Romney argues the following:
"Never before in American history has its president
gone before so many foreign audiences to apologize for so many American
misdeeds, both real and imagined. It is his way of signaling to foreign
countries and foreign leaders that their dislike for America is
something he understands and that is, at least in part, understandable."
Nothing about this sentence is true.
President Obama never went around the world and apologized for America – and yet, even after
multiple news organizations have pointed out this is a
"pants on fire"
lie, Romney keeps making it. Indeed, the "Obama apology tour", along
with the president bowing down to the King of Saudi Arabia, are
practically the lodestars of the GOP's criticism of Obama's foreign
policy performance (the Saudi thing isn't true either).
But foreign policy is a relatively light area of
mistruth for the GOP standard-bearer. The economy is really where the
truth takes its greatest vacation in Romney world. First, there is
Romney's claim that the 2009 stimulus passed by Congress and signed by
President Obama "didn't work". According to Romney, "that stimulus
didn't put more private-sector people to work." While one can quibble
over whether the stimulus went far enough, the idea that it didn't
create private-sector
jobs has no relationship to reality.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus bill created more than 3m jobs – a view shared by 80% of economists
polled by the Chicago Booth School of Business (only 4% disagree).
thanks for correcting.