Besides being cruel to his pet dog, Mitt Romney is a serial liar. In the midst of a long list of Romney’s lies, Leonard Steinhorn writes:
But we know that Romney is rich, privileged, and fairly isolated in his wealth. That’s become a meme in this campaign. We also know he changes positions to fit his political needs – perhaps more so than other politicians and thus his flip-flopping has become another Romney meme for 2012.
What we don’t yet want to admit is a more discomfiting idea: that the man our country may elect as President seems to have no problem lying to us, that he is accumulating a record of lies and misrepresentations on the campaign trail that goes far beyond the exaggerated rhetoric characteristic of most candidates.
Yes, politicians might fudge a statistic, mitigate a failure, embellish a story, or take a little extra credit for success, and because of that most pundits and journalists have folded Romney’s lies and misrepresentations into the big tent of exaggerated political rhetoric that reporters now take for granted even if they roll their eyes when hearing it. No big deal, we’re led to believe.
But Romney is different from the others. He seems to make claims that he knows are not true. This is a very smart man, a maven for details and a stickler for precision known for his data-driven business decisions, yet he looks us in the eyes and makes statements and claims that he knows to be misleading or false.