Robert Reich in his BLOG discusses the overt and oft repeated lies coming from Mitt Romney or his supporters. Reich contends that with all the money the Romney campaign and other dark money organizations are putting behind political ads in the battleground states, the obvious lies are gradually gaining some ground:  people think they’re true no matter how many other outlets demonstrate that they are lies.

This, of course, is the Goebbels contribution to political campaigning:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Reich ends his post by summarizing the question of what kind of man Romney actually is:

So Romney’s lying machine is working.

But what does all this tell us about the man who is running this lying machine? (Or if Romney’s not running it, what does it tell us about a man who would select the people who are?)

We knew he was a cypher — that he’ll say and do whatever is expedient, change positions like a chameleon, eschew any core principles.

Yet resorting to outright lies — and organizing a presidential campaign around a series of lies — reveals a whole new level of cynicism, a profound disdain for what remains of civility in public life, and a disrespect of the democratic process.

The question is whether someone who is willing to resort to such calculated lies, and build a campaign machine around them, can be worthy of the public’s trust with the most powerful office in the world.

Continue reading “Romney’s Lying Machine” →