Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 01:52 am
On Meet The Press today, Rachel Maddow used the lie about Jeep moving production to China to slam Romney for having a truthfulness problem.
Here’s the video:
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Maddow used Romney’s recent Jeep fearmongering to drive the point home that Romney has a problem with telling the truth, “On the integrity issue, on the trust issue, Mitt Romney this went to Defiance, Ohio and told a group of 11,000 people “Jeep is about to move all of their production overseas. I read that somewhere. Jeep is going to move all of its production–” Not at all true. It’s okay for a candidate to make a flub, but not to correct it, to not say “I was wrong about that.” The campaign was asked: “Are you sure the candidate meant that because that doesn’t seem to be true?” No response clearing that up from the campaign. There’s been a truthfulness problem with the Romney campaign that connects even to the very basic issues like the economy in the states where it most matters.”
The Jeep moving to China lie has been causing a major headache for Chrysler. After Romney utter his Great Jeep Lie, Chrysler put out a statement telling the world that Romney was wrong, sloppy, and biased, “Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.”
This hasn’t stopped Romney from repeating the claim, and upping the ante by releasing a misleading television ad centered around a something that isn’t true.
After the final presidential debate, Rachel Maddow called Romney’s avoidance of his own previous positions, “a character issue” that should disqualify him from office. A little over a week ago, Maddow looked at Romney’s position(s) on abortion, and concluded that the Republican candidate had adopted a strategy of blatant lying in order to get elected.
It took Rachel Maddow a while to come around and understand that Romney isn’t gaffing or flubbing. The man is intentionally not telling the American people the truth about what he really stands for. Since she has come to this realization, she is one of the few mainstream media members who is constantly hammering away on Romney’s unwillingness to be honest.
The central issue of this election isn’t Mitt Romney’s positions on the issues. It isn’t his record, or his time at Bain. The biggest issue concerning Romney is nobody has any idea what he stands for, because he continues to reinvent the truth to fit his needs. Romney shares the policies of George W. Bush, but he hasn’t been as open as Bush was about what those policies are.
Romney’s truthfulness problem is what has allowed him to be competitive with Obama, but it is also the very thing that could cost him victory on Election Day.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
