Pants on Fire in NC?

In the last blog I noted a few of the more outstanding lies by Romney and his running mate, Pinocchio Ryan. Now it’s the Democrats turn to try to match them lie for lie.

Can they do it?

Maybe.

According to one observer, “so far there is little to be believed in the course of the Democratic Party convention. It is a great concoction of half-truths, distortions, and outright lies. The hypocrisy fills the convention all like the musk of a dead, decaying animal corpse.”[i]

This sounds promising.

In fact, it sounds exactly like the other convention that ended last week.

But as this blog has often pointed out, it’s not just the number of outright lies you can tell or the totally quantity of dissembling you do.  It’s the weight of the lies that count.  The real key is how well do the lies fit into and support your narrative of why your way is the best way to run the country.  A heavy weight lie fits into the narrative and makes the story work.

To put it in a nutshell, the Democrat’s story is that we are all one big family and that no one is really successful unless the whole family, including the elderly, the weak, the unemployed, etc. are all brought along and given opportunities to succeed, at least to some extent.  It’s no good for one person to be wildly successful and then “slam the door behind him” as Michelle Obama said, closing down the opportunities for the rest of the family.

The Republican narrative, on the other hand, is that its every man for himself and the government needs to stop making job-creating successful businessmen drag along a bunch of lazy good-for-nothing freeloaders.

These are thumbnail versions, of course.  A more detailed and accurate description of the two narratives each party buys into appears in the excellent article by Bill Shireman in the September 5, 2012, Huffington Post.  I recommend this article for a full picture of two contrasting dogmas by an astute political observer.  Unfortunately, however, Shireman has deluded himself into thinking that we can undo the destructive effects of these false political narratives. He has a three-step plan, each step of which is insanely unrealistic. [ii]

But now…back to the Democrat’s convention lies.

It is only half time, but how are the Dems doing in cooking the facts to support their one-sided phony story? Five big ones have been noted so far and Obama has not even taken his shot.

1.       Bill Clinton opined that it is only the Republicans who stand in the way of compromise. This is a big fat blatant lie because it ignores the fact that both parties are now extremely polarized, according to The Blaze.[iii]

2.       Delaware Gov. Jack Markell claimed that Mitt Romney has said that “he likes to fire people.” This is a distortion. What Mitt really said was that he liked to fire people in the service industry who don’t provide good service.[iv]

3.       Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy made the claim that the Republican platform would “take away a woman’s right to choose even if she is a rape victim.” That may be true, but Mitt Romney has said that he does not agree with it. So this is a twisting of the truth. Same thing as a lie only more effective.

4.       Various speakers enumerated the harmful cuts that Romney would make under his plan to cut 20% from domestic discretionary expenditures, including  first responders, Head Start, Pell Grants,  after school programs, etc. This is a scare tactic lie. The truth is that Romney has not said exactly which programs he would cut to make the 20% overall cut.

5.       Bill Clinton said that Obama’s plan would cut the deficit by $4 trillion. That figure is not accurate because it includes $1 trillion in cuts Obama has already agreed to. It also counts almost $1 trillion in savings from winding down the wars in Afganistan and Iraq that Obama had already planned to make anyway.

On top of all that, the Democrats have been throwing around the “N” word way  too much (the “N” world that refers to a German dictator, not the other “n” word). This is totally uncalled for because no one in the Republican party is openly calling for a German style dictatorship.[v]

Joseph Geobbels, Propaganda Minister

It should be clear that, so far at least, the Democrats are lying as much as one would expect, but they have totally failed to connect their lies to their underlying narrative.  Their message is splattered all over the place.  They cannot seem to keep their story straight. They even let a few facts enter the arena illegally. They are wandering off message half the time, and the lies they are telling do not hook into the dogma that they need to promote.  It’s a messaging disaster.

In creating a masterful story and underpinning it with a strong foundation of appropriate lies, the Republicans are still the masters. They have the PhDs. The Dems are still in elementary school.  In fact, some of them seem to have skipped school altogether.

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[i] The quote is from the always enjoyable Rightside News blog.

[ii] You can read about Shireman’s absurdly optomistic scheme here.

[iii] This list of 5 Democratic lies is taken from The Blaze.

[iv] The full Romney quote is ““I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.” Jan 9, 2012.

[v] Pat Lehman, the dean of the Kansas Democratic delegation, said of the Republican convention that It’s like Hitler said, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big lie, and if you tell it often enough and say it in a loud enough voice, some people are going to believe you,” Also California Democratic chief John Burton said of the Republican speakers that "They lie and they don't care if people think they lie ... Joseph Goebbels -- the big lie, you keep repeating it," Burton said. "That was Goebbels, the big lie."Read more about how the Dems are throwing around the Nazi word at: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/05/third-democratic-party-official-reportedly-likens-republicans-to-nazis-at/#ixzz25hxPX7Ph