Why Romney keeps attacking things Obama didn’t say

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/why-romney-keeps-attacking-things-obama-didnt-say/2012/07/30/gJQAcfhTKX_blog.html?socialreader_check=0&denied=1

Why Romney keeps attacking things Obama didn’t say
By Greg Sargent


Mitt Romney’s ongoing distortion of Obama’s “didn’t build that” quote has been debunked by FactCheck.org, Politifact, the Associated Press, and many others. Romney’s other leading distortion of the moment — his use of Obama’s claim that “our” plan “worked,” in which Obama was talking about the Clinton/Obama approach to taxes, not Obama’s economic policies — was dismantled convincingly today by Post fact checker Glenn Kessler.

snip//

Why does Romney continue to base much of his campaign on attacks on things Obama never said? The simplest answer is that Romney needs to obscure the true nature of the differences between the two men.

I’ve already taken a stab at arguing here and here how Romney tries to achieve this on the “didn’t build that” quote. This goal is equally clear on the more recent distortion of the “our plan” remarks. Obama wants to raise taxes on income over $250,000 earned by the top two percent of taxpayers. Romney wants to cut taxes across the board in ways that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest taxpayers. On this question, the public sides with Obama. So Romney needs to obscure Obama’s true proposal by continually sidestepping who would see their taxes go up under it. He also needs to wrap Obama's tax proposal into a larger argument about how Obama’s supposedly government-centric policies are, and would continue, smothering the private sector, while Romney’s plan, including a dramatic cut in high end taxes, would allegedly unshackle it.

What Obama pointed out in the disputed “our plan” quote is that the Clinton years disprove Romney’s notion that raising high end taxes will cripple growth. And so the Romney campaign needs to mislead people about the true nature of the common ground between Clinton and Obama on taxes, by arguing alternately that Obama was talking about his own policies, or that Obama has no business associating his record with Clinton’s.

The narratives about both quotes are two sides of the same coin — both are about obscuring the true nature of the differences between Obama’s and Romney’s overall philosophies. Result: another week, another series of Romney campaign events premised on things Obama never actually said.

[louis-t]

1. "Yes, but FactCheck.org is owned by George Soros so..."

At least that's what my crazy relatives keep saying.

[WI_DEM]

2. because the MSM will let him get away with it and yet take Obama to task if

he 'misrepresents' Romney.

[liberal N proud]

3. It's typical, they need the public to believe that Obama said it.

So they keep attacking it and repeating it.

The republican belief has long been held that if you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes true in the mind of the voter.

[Heather MC]

4. He can do it because L.I.V.s will believe him. Like they believe Gore said he invented the internet

[onehandle]

5. Klassic Karl KRove. nt