That candidates don’t tell the truth is hardly news. Voters already know there are lies, damn lies, and politics. And certainly, Romney has abundant company in his mendacity. Just this week, Obama dared the Supreme Court to overturn his health-care reforms, saying it “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” In fact, the law passed by the barest of margins — and, as a former constitutional law instructor such as Obama surely knows, the Supreme Court routinely strikes down laws passed by Congress.
But the fact that the fibs are routine doesn’t make them less insidious. Public support for the war in Iraq was no doubt aided by the perception among a majority of Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11 attacks — a frequent insinuation of the Bush administration.
PolitiFact has awarded Romney its “Pants on Fire” or “False” ratings for 32 claims. Among them are these: that Obama “didn’t even mention the deficit or debt” in his State of the Union address, that “our Navy is smaller than it’s been since 1917,” that Obama “never worked in the private sector,” that Obama “gave” the automakers “to the UAW,” that “we’re only inches away from no longer being a free economy.” that Obama led “a government takeover of health care,” has been “apologizing for America abroad” and is ending “Medicare as we know it.” Romney’s assertions that Obama “is the only president to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare” and that eliminating Obamacare saves “about $100 billion” were all among the ones rated false.
That Romney resorts to such gratuitous falsehoods discredits his leadership more than his opponent’s.
For more: The facts vs. Mitt Romney - The Washington Post
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