They say there's a movie out about Mitt Romney, painting him as just a really decent guy. I don't plan to find out.
With the possible demise of Chris "No one tells me anything" Christie's presidential aspirations, some on the right -- tacitly admitting the bottom of the barrel has been breached -- have encouraged Mr Romney to run again. Even I can't bring myself to wish the humiliation on him; but he seems to be eschewing the effort. So far.
Meanwhile, let's not forget that Mitt Romney raised the bar on prevarication and mendacity higher than it's ever been. His lies were legion, nearly uncountable (Steve Benen stopped at 533). It says more than any of us would like to know about the state of US politics that nearly half the country not only didn't care, but actively denied it. From the above-linked article:
This is documented. Proven. Validated, verified, demonstrated, catalogued and quantified. Mitt Romney lies.
Here are 30 — 30! — of Benen’s weekly “chronicling” posts. These are all backed up and sourced. These are not assertions, interpretations or allegations. These are facts, actual instances.
Over the past 30 weeks, Mitt Romney has told lie after lie after lie: I, II, III, IV, V, VI,VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII,XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.
Click those links. Read the lists. List after list of lie after lie. Hundreds of them — 533, to be exact, although Benen does not make any claim to providing a comprehensive chronicle.
This is unprecedented. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” Romney’s pollster, Neil Newhouse, said.
This has produced what James Fallows calls the “post-truth” age — a relentlessly dishonest onslaught of brazen falsehoods with which the media and the political system are struggling to cope. What do you do when every article, every “fact-check,” every arbiter denounces a lie and corrects it, but then a politician just keeps repeating it?...
... One of the weirder aspects of this for me is watching this unfold in the politically conservative culture of my evangelical world. The most partisan evangelical conservatives are also those most likely to rant against “relativism” and to trumpet their status as defenders of “absolute truth.” ...That's Mitt Romney's legacy; and the extent to which an entire party was unwilling to acknowledge it, much less call him out, is proof of how far they've fallen from what some might once have considered a conservative value (not exclusive, by any means, but one they once claimed). The guy always gave me the creeps. Run again? Who in his or her right mind....
[Image source]
