Lie of the Day: Romney on Obamacare

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

From Mitt Romney, telling a friendly audience about a disturbing passage from Noam Scheiber’s The Escape Artists:

In this book he says that there was a discussion about the fact that Obamacare would slow down the economic recovery in this country and they knew that before they passed it. But they concluded that we would all forget how long the recovery took once it had happened, so they decided to go ahead. The idea that they knowingly slowed down our recovery […] is something which I think deserves a lot of explaining.

You know, I expect political candidates to bend the truth a fair amount. Maybe I don’t like it, but it’s the way the game is played and it’s the way the game has always been played.

But Romney’s willingness to flat-out lie is singular. Usually presidential candidates leave that kind of thing to surrogates, so they have deniability if they’re called on it. Personally, they limit themselves to cherry picking and semi-defensible twisting of reality. After all, a plain lie is so very unpresidential.

But Romney doesn’t much seem to care about that. I guess he’s figured out that something like this works on the campaign trail but isn’t a big enough deal to ever attract any national attention. So why not?

In any case, Jon Chait has chapter and verse of the truth here if you’re interested. The chart comparing flat-out whoppers between Romney and Obama comes from one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate