The Creepy Small Lies of the Romney Campaign

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—By Kevin Drum| Thu Jul. 26, 2012 7:57 AM PDT

President Obama has gotten at least a little bit of friendly fire from supporters who say that, although Republicans are taking his words wildly out of context, he's a pro and he needs to be a little more careful not to give them ammunition. But does it matter? David Weigel points to the latest bit of over-the-top mendacity from the Romney campaign, this supposed quote from Obama:

Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked. That’s the difference. That’s the choice in this election. That’s why I’m running for a second term.

The problem with Obama's claim, of course, is that "our plan" isn't working all that well at the moment, as Jim Geraghty gleefully points out here. Except that it turns out Obama was talking about tax rates during the Clinton era vs. tax rates in the Bush era. And on that score, there's a pretty good case to be made that, in fact, the economy did a whole lot better with "our" tax rates than with theirs.

But look: there's nothing Obama could have done to avoid this. If Republicans are willing to just flat-out lie about what he said, it's impossible to self-edit your remarks enough to avoid it. We've now seen the Romney campaign make hay out of three wild misquotations:

"If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," which turned out to be Obama in 2008 quoting John McCain. "What's sauce for the goose is now sauce for the gander," Romney said in his defense.
"If you've got a business, you didn't build that," a statement that quite obviously referred to the "roads and bridge" of the previous sentence. This one is so bad that supporters have taken to splicing it together with an earlier part of Obama's speech and simply removing the "roads and bridges" reference entirely.
"We tried our plan — and it worked."

As Weigel says, "At this point, getting video clips of Obama from Republican campaigns is like getting an article pitch from Jayson Blair. It might tell a good story, but you need to run down the source and triple-check."

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http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/creepy-small-lies-romney-campaign

[Angry Dragon]

1. Big lies from the Willard camp