![\"Mitt](\"\/Pix\/Campaign2012\/ask-mitt-anything.jpg\")
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However, the lack of a message does not equate to the lack of a strategy. To the contrary, it makes the formation of an effective game plan all the more critical. Unfortunately for Mitt Romney, he has not been able to devise a game plan, effective or otherwise. Consequently he has settled on a haphazard approach that consists primarily of hurling wildly dishonest misrepresentations of President Obama’s positions and forcing the President to waste precious campaign time debunking Romney’s lies. It’s a tactic that aims to run out the clock on the campaign and hope that some of the mud sticks to the target. For instance, Romney has flung these spitballs at the President:<\/p>\n
“You didn’t build that.”<\/em><\/strong> This is a deliberate misquoting of Obama who was actually referring to roads and bridges, not the private businesses that Romney has tried to imply were the subject of the remarks.<\/p>\n
“The private sector is doing fine.”<\/em><\/strong> This is another misrepresentation where Obama was correctly making a relative comparison of the private sector, which has grown over the past three years, to the public sector, which has been shrinking.<\/p>\n
“We tried our plan and it worked.”<\/em><\/strong> Here Romney deliberately asserted that Obama was referencing his own record and implying that it had achieved complete success. In fact, Obama has consistently said that more needs to be done and this comment was plainly referencing the success of the Clinton era policies as opposed to the failure of the GOP’s years under Bush\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
“[Obama] removed the requirement of work from welfare.”<\/em><\/strong> Most recently Romney made this accusation that is directly refuted by the facts. What Obama did was to permit waivers for states that could affirm their progress in moving people from welfare to work, and allowing them flexibility to enhance their programs. It’s a modification that Romney himself had requested when he was governor of Massachusetts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
These phony attacks are utterly baseless. However, they do require the Obama team to waste time responding. It seems inevitable that Romney intends to continue this tactic of flinging falsehoods rather than focusing on issues that are relevant to voters. He really doesn’t have much choice considering that he won’t reveal any details of his agenda, which would give the candidates something substantive to discuss. What’s more, he is desperate to divert attention from his refusal to release his tax returns, but he doesn’t have anything else legitimate to talk about.<\/p>\n
This strategy is creating some peculiar moments in the campaign. This morning Romney unleashed an onslaught of faux outrage over an Obama ad that featured Joe Soptic, a man who lost his job and health insurance as a result of Romney’s vulture capitalism. Romney complained that the ad portrays him as the killer of Soptic’s wife who died of cancer without insurance. Romney’s spokesperson, Andrea Saul showed up on Fox News (where else?) to declare that if the Soptic’s “had been in Massachusetts, under Gov. Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.”<\/em> The irony in that statement is that Romney has been feverishly trying to avoid the health care plan he implemented as governor. What’s more, this is an argument that admits that the Soptic’s would have benefited from the plan that Romney now seeks to repeal for all Americans.<\/p>\n
The overt dishonesty that Romney has exhibited throughout this campaign, a characteristic observed by his GOP opponents in the primary, is a major contributor to his record low favorability ratings. However, the media does not seem to have caught on. President Obama expressed his disappointment in the “false balance”<\/em> that is presented in the press. That has been a problem for years. It is simply unacceptable that reporters insist on balancing facts with lies. There is no journalistic requirement that a story about the organic composition of the moon be “balanced”<\/em> with the opposing opinion that it is really just green cheese. Politicians whine about bias when they are called out for straying from the facts. But the press has an obligation to be biased, so long as it’s a bias for the truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a candidate who has been running for president for at least six years, Mitt Romney is woefully short of a message or a coherent campaign theme. He has spent much of that time Etch-a-Sketching his positions on health care, abortion, gay rights, Iraq, and pretty much anything he has previously taken a position on. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[152,1],"tags":[183,260],"class_list":["post-7733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-general","tag-barack-obama","tag-mitt-romney"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-20J","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7511,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7511","url_meta":{"origin":7733,"position":0},"title":"An Arrogant Romney Campaign Shifts Focus To Window Dressing","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/6\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In the past week Mitt Romney has come under severe attacks by conservatives who think that he is blowing any chance he had of beating President Obama. Bill Kristol, Laura Ingraham, and Rupert Murdoch have all made it clear that they are more than disappointed with Romney's performance as a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8069,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8069","url_meta":{"origin":7733,"position":1},"title":"Mitt Romney: The Master Of Mangling Context","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/21\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The GOP's candidate of the of the one-percent, Mitt Romney, has built his campaign around a unique strategy: Take everything President Obama says out of context and then try to use it against him. This is a tactic that he has been employing repeatedly in lieu of actually telling voters\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7884,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7884","url_meta":{"origin":7733,"position":2},"title":"Romney Campaign Advisor Says That Facts Have ‘Jumped The Shark’","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/28\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Anyone paying attention to this campaign already knows that Mitt Romney has little respect for facts. He has repeatedly mangled the truth in order to advance his campaign and to slander President Obama. And it isn't just a few policy disagreements that are shaded for effect. Romney is a full-blown\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7180,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7180","url_meta":{"origin":7733,"position":3},"title":"Fox Nation vs. Reality: Reviving Trump Birther Charges To Attack Romney","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/29\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Talk about desperate... The Fox Nationalists have posted this article asserting that a desperate Obama campaign is \"Reviving Trump's Birther Charges.\" And it is a devious strategy that Obama is plotting by somehow managing to get Donald Trump to reiterate his lunatic position on Obama's citizenship. Last week, without any\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7689,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7689","url_meta":{"origin":7733,"position":4},"title":"Romney Press Aide Tells Press To ‘Kiss My Ass’","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/31\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It appears that Mitt Romney's absence of diplomacy has trickled down to his staff. Rick Gorka, whose job is to work with the press covering the Romney campaign, lashed out at reporters today telling them to \"shove it\" and to \"kiss my ass.\" The incident that set off this temper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7754,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7754","url_meta":{"origin":7733,"position":5},"title":"Mitt Romney Proposes Campaign Truce Where Obama Must Agree Not To Campaign","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/10\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Mitt Romney clearly believes that he is above the rules to which the rest of us peasants are subject. He thinks that he can be as nasty as he wants, but if his opponent should respond in kind, then Romney pitifully demands apologies. Yesterday, in a monumental display of arrogance,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7733"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7737,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7733\/revisions\/7737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}