The Obama campaign's dishonest attack ads portraying Mitt Romney as a "corporate raider" and a "pioneer" of shipping American jobs overseas have been debunked by multiple independent fact checkers. WaPo called the first such spot "misleading, unfair and untrue," and FactCheck.org found "no evidence" to support Obama's allegations. Undeterred by facts and unconstrained by truth, Chicago has produced a second ad on the very same subject, repeating the very same discredited claims. An NBC News affiliate in Florida examined the new spot and reached the same conclusion as the other truth-seeking entities: The ad is "false."
How do you respond when your opponent demonstrates no compunction about lying to the public repeatedly, even after being presented with compelling evidence by impartial third parties? You call him a liar, amplify the truth, and punch back. That's what Republicans are doing today. BuzzFeed reports that the Romney campaign, livid over Obama's serial prevarications, is planning to let loose its surrogates to employ the L-word against the president in a series of media interviews:
The Romney campaign will begin to aggressively push back against President Obama's accusations that the Republican was an "outsourcing pioneer" today, a source privy to the the campaign's strategy told BuzzFeed. In a conference call Monday morning, senior staff said Romney's surrogates would stop shying away from the word "lie" in responding to Democrats' attacks on his business record, and plan to go on TV to call Obama a "liar," the source said. "They are very fed up with these attacks," said the source.
On the truth amplification front, expect to see more ads like the "shame on you!" spot we highlighted last week (which, incidentally, also accused Obama of "lies"). I'd also like to see more forceful and high-profile clarifications of Romney's actual record, correcting mischaracterizations of both his Massachusetts governorship and his "superb" (Steve Rattner) and "sterling" (Bill Clinton) stewardship of Bain Capital. But ultimately, the old political adage applies: If you're explaining, you're losing -- which is why the counter-assault is critical. Today the RNC is rolling out ObamanomicsOutsourced.com, a website that tracks the billions in taxpayer money that Obama's failed stimulus has channeled to foreign companies and interests, both directly and indirectly. A brief appetite whetter:
The One has been ravenously ripping Romney for his supposed outsourcing based on no evidence, so it will be interesting to see how he responds when his own venture socialism is put under the off-shoring microscope. Also, have we heard any explanation yet for why his campaign outsourced some of its own call-center work? Supporters of free markets have nothing against "outsourcing," per se, but Obama has stacked this deck against himself. One ought not hurl baseless accusations against one's opponent when one's own record on the issue at hand is ripe for attack; in Obama's case, he used (borrowed) taxpayer money to subsidize overseas projects as part of a massive, failed boondoggle that was ostensibly designed to create American jobs. A new USA Today poll shows Obama holding a statistically-insignificant lead in 12 battleground states, and on-air spending has undoubtedly played a significant role in shaping those numbers. Our post-partisan healer has been pummeling his opponent for weeks:
President Obama has spent more than $91 million on television ads in eight swing states as of July 6, a massive sum that dwarfs the $23 million former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has disbursed on campaign commercials in those same places. Only heavy spending by Republican super PACs is keeping Romney within financial shouting distance of the incumbent on television at this point. The data, which was provided to the Fix by a Republican media buyer, paints a fascinating picture of Obama’s overwhelming ad advantage in each of the states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia — where both campaigns are spending. The spending disparity between the campaigns is particularly pronounced in three of the swingiest states: Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
In light of Romney's enormous June fundraising haul -- he and the RNC out-raised Obama/DNC by $35 million -- the playing field is going to start to level out rather quickly. When that happens, prepare for increased liberal caterwauling about money in politics and "buying elections." Hell, Obama's already uncorking whoppers about getting outspent in 2008:
Um, yeah. Not even close, champ. You broke your public funding pledge, raised an Everest of cash, then beat John McCain to a pulp in total spending. Here are the totals, in case you'd "forgotten:"
Bloomberg adds that The One blitzed McCain by a 4-to-1 spending margin over the '08 campaign's final stretch -- yet he's telling audiences on the stump that things were the other way around without batting an eye. I think there's a word for this sort of person.