David Brooks was apparently very enamored with Mitt Romney's flip flopping during the first presidential debate and believes that he is somehow not beholden to the right wing of his party because he shifted a bunch of his positions back to the so-called "center."
The reason Mitt Romney has gotten away from having one of the most lie-filled presidential campaigns and with being on every side of every issue without being punished in the court of public opinion for his mendacity, is exactly because of the likes of David Brooks and his ilk in the media who continually either excuse or praise his behavior, as Brooks did here.
Here's how he ended the segment above:
JUDY WOODRUFF: The Obama folks are saying it is a different Mitt Romney.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, they had a big decision to make six, eight months ago, which was, do we attack him as a right-wing ideologue or as a flip-flopper? They went ideologue. Now they're trying to switch to flip-flopper.
But I think he will have to continue that. It's working for him.
Yes folks, all that lying is working out splendidly. As I've heard a few people -- one being Randi Rhodes on her radio show -- point out after listening to Romney again 'pivot" on a number of his positions, if you're on a debate team at your high school or college, there are actually penalties for lying. You lie like a rug and reverse yourself and tell easily disprovable lies like we've been hearing from Romney for ages now, and you lose the debate just for that. Sadly, we don't have anything close to those standards in the corporate media or for presidential debates. There, the opposite is true and the lying is rewarded.
And if anyone actually believes that Romney won't be beholden to the right wing of his party if we're unfortunate enough to find him as our next president just because he's shifting some of his stances again to appease some low information voters who watched the debate, I'd say they're deluding themselves. All you have to do is look at how he's responded to them during this campaign and the fact that what moves he did make during that debate were empty rhetoric which either he or his staff started to immediately reverse course on as soon as he left the stage.
And speaking of Romney lying, here's more from Joe Conason, who did not excuse President Obama's performance, but expressed some of the same frustration I had while watching the debate -- Highly Debatable: The Big Liar’s Biggest Lies:
“It’s not easy to debate a liar,” complained an email from one observer of the first presidential debate – and there was no question about which candidate he meant. Prevarication, falsification, fabrication are all familiar tactics that have been employed by Mitt Romney without much consequence to him ever since he entered public life, thanks to the inviolable taboo in the mainstream media against calling out a liar (unless, of course, he lies about sex).
Yes, President Obama ought to have been better prepared for Romney’s barrage of blather and bull. The Republican’s own chief advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom, had glibly described the “Etch-a-Sketch” strategy they would deploy in the general election, to make swing voters forget the “severe conservative” of the primaries. Romney executed that pivot on Wednesday night, but he could do so only by spouting literally dozens of provably fraudulent assertions — which various diligent fact-checkers proceeded to debunk. Read on...
And here's Steve Benen's latest with his update on the staggering number of lies told by Willard over the last thirty seven weeks -- Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXVII.
Full transcript below the fold.
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