Keeping Track of Willard's Lies

It's time for Willard's Lies of the week.

Once again, I will point out the site on the blog roll: Romney The Liar: because there are Liars, Damn Liars, and then there's Mitt Romney.

Steve Benen, now at The Maddow Blog:. Here's last week's entry of Chronicling Mitt's mendacity:

The Opening:

Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXVIII

By Steve Benen

Fri Oct 12, 2012 2:20 PM EDT

The broader concerns about Mitt Romney's comfort with dishonesty reached a milestone this week -- it got The Onion treatment. (Remember, this is satire. The quotes in this excerpt are not actual quotes.)

For weeks many Beltway insiders had written off the Romney campaign as dead, saying the candidate had dug himself into too deep a hole with too little time to recover. However, with a month to go before ballots are cast, Romney has pulled even with President Obama, and the former Massachusetts governor credits his rejuvenated campaign to one, singular tactic: lying a lot.

"I'm lying a lot more, and my lies are far more egregious than they've ever been," a smiling Romney told reporters while sitting in the back of his campaign bus, adding that when faced with a choice to either lie or tell the truth, he will more than likely lie. "It's a strategy that works because when I lie, I'm essentially telling people what they want to hear, and people really like hearing things they want to hear. Even if they sort of know that nothing I'm saying is true."

"It's a freeing strategy, really, because I don't have to worry about facts or being accurate or having any concrete positions of any kind," Romney added.

The satirical report added that Romney has vowed to continue to "just openly lie [his] ass off" until Election Day. It also "quoted" the Republican's campaign manager saying, "It's late in the game, but this campaign has finally found its groove. And that groove is lying. Bald-faced, make-no-apologies, dirty, filthy lying."

Behind all great satire, of course, is a degree of truth -- or in this case, more than a degree. Consider, for example, the 38th installment of my weekly series, chronicling Mitt's mendacity. (This is the second longest list of the year -- and the quotes below are entirely real, not satire.)

1. At a town-hall forum in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Romney said of President Obama, "He said he was going to cut the deficit in half; he's doubled it."

Romney is still having trouble with the definition of "double." The deficit on Obama's first day was $1.3 trillion. Last year, it was also $1.3 trillion. This year, it's projected to be $1.1 trillion. When he says the president "doubled" the deficit, as he has many times, Romney's lying.

2. At the same event, condemning the Affordable Care Act, Romney said, "We'll let people choose the plans they want, as opposed to the plan that the president thinks he and the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are going to impose on the American people."

As Romney surely knows -- his state-based policy works the same way -- the whole point of the Affordable Care Act is to provide consumers with choices of private plans, made available through regulated exchanges. Giving people choices in place and "imposing" a plan are opposites.

3. Romney added, "[W]hen I went to the Olympics and helped guide the Olympics, I learned as well you got to balance the budget here or we'll be in real trouble."

In context, Romney made it sound as if he balanced the Olympics' books through skill. In reality, he balanced his budget at the Olympics thanks to a taxpayer bailout.

4. In an interview with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, Romney argued, "I know the Obama people are excited about trying to find a way to say, 'Oh, you're going to raise taxes on middle-income people,' and I keep pointing out, 'No, no.'"

Yes, yes.