The Big, Racist Lie at the Center of the Romney-Ryan Campaign

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland
The Big, Racist Lie at the Center of the Romney-Ryan Campaign
How long can they get away with blatantly lying?
August 24, 2012 |



The Romney team appears to have adopted a strategy of throwing so much dishonest spin around that the fact-checkers just throw their hands up in frustration. Along with his bald-faced lie that Obama “raided” Medicare, this week the campaign tripled-down on its universally debunked claim that the Obama administration had killed the welfare “reforms” passed by Bill Clinton. In fact, they defended that ad by citing a fact-free column by Mickey Kaus published on Tucker Carlson's always-wrong right-wing blog, the Daily Caller.

They hope to make inroads attacking welfare because, like the infamous "Southern strategy," it stokes racial animus. Political scientist Michael Tesler studied voters' reactions to seeing Romney's first welfare ad, and found that, “among those who saw it, racial resentment affected whether people thought Romney will help the poor, the middle-class, and African-Americans.”

Ed Kilgore, who writes for the Washington Monthly, knows as much about Clinton's welfare policies as anyone, having served as the Vice President of Policy for the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist Democratic think-tank closely alined with Clinton, in the 1990s. Kilgore joined us on this week's AlterNet Radio Hour to discuss welfare and everything else the Romney-Ryan team is throwing against the wall and hoping to see stick. A lightly edited transcript of the discussion is below (you can listen to the whole show here-at link).

Joshua Holland: I want to talk about Romney-Ryan. Is this the first time both liberals and conservatives have been so gleeful over a vice-presidential pick, or is this the first time in recent memory?

Ed Kilgore: It’s the first time I can really remember it being so equal. Occasionally, you’ll get varying descriptions of how one side thinks a candidate is a handicap and another side thinks he or she is an advantage. But in this case there actually is some overlap, a feeling that this offers the electorate a much clearer choice between the two parties. It certainly makes the Republican ticket stand for something other than, "take a chance on something different." I’d say when the announcement came out over the weekend there was joy pretty much everywhere -- except perhaps among Republican political professionals, who were not happy.

lots more...

http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/big-racist-lie-center-romney-ryan-campaign?paging=off