Mitt Romney Finally Wins Something! His Jeep Lie Is the Lie of the Year

Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:45 am

Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney Finally Wins Something! (Lie of the Year)

Remember when a desperate Mitt Romney put out an ad saying Obama sold Chrysler to Italians who were moving jobs to China? Yeah. Those were the days.

Specifically, the Romney lie that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China is the super special something that finally got over 47% of the vote for Romney. Yes, he wins Lie of the Year from PolitiFact!

The factcheckers at PolitiFact note with what seems like incredulity, “they stood by the claim, even as the media and the public expressed collective outrage against something so obviously false.”

I say, hey factcheckers, this is nothing! You should have heard what he said about women in binders. Okay, well, we are not corporations so our denials are not as serious.

They continue, “People often say that politicians don’t pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election.”

Yes, a flood of negative press rained down on Romney because he lied about a corporation. That is a no-no in America. You may lie about union members, gays, women, Hispanics, black people, and just about anyone else (but not conservatives or white men) but you may not lie about a corporation. It’s in the Bible (where it also says greed is one of the seven sins).

The Drudge Report gets a special mention as having given fire to the lie. It’s what they do.

Lest you think wow, hey, the fact-checkers are getting on board, last year they voted the lie of the year as “Republicans voted to end Medicare.” (Democrats, who take fact-checking seriously, added “as we know it” to their claim regarding Ryan’s budget, in order to meet the standards of the fact-checkers. Still no go.)

Because we all know that privatizing Medicare won’t “end” it, per se. It will just make it an entirely new entity that will cost too much, waste taxpayer money, and not work. Saying that is ending Medicare is a bad exaggeration, unless by “Medicare” you mean to imply some sort of social safety net, in which case you are correct but shhhh.

PolitiFact concluded, “For a variety of reasons, it is a significant structural change to Medicare. As we’ll see, there are good arguments on both sides that it does or does not end Medicare “as we know it”” They also noted that really, they couldn’t make this determination, because “Ryan has not submitted his latest plan to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office…” But why not give Republicans the benefit of the doubt, right? I mean, it’s not as if they lie often…

Only, the Lie of the Year the year before was a Republican one and the year before that… all about healthcare (death panels and government takeover of health care). But still! Both sides do it equally.

So the Medicare “lie” is equivalent to the blatantly false lie of moving jobs to China, which was absolutely, patently false. Feeling some pressure to find “balance”, PolitiFact?

No worries, the Romney campaign told PolitiFact they were happy with the ad because it worked. As in, it misled voters in Ohio (a state they lost). “If you look in those markets, we did better in those markets for having run that,” a Romney campaign strategist said. Winning!

Republicans curse you, PolitiFact. How dare you not find some Democratic lie that can be falsely equated to this one in both resilient, deliberate deception and conservative bubble foolishness?

Sarah Jones
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