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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2008 / McCain’s Pathological Lying Creating a Cottage Industry

McCain’s Pathological Lying Creating a Cottage Industry

by John Cole|  September 15, 200810:34 am| 36 Comments

This post is in: Election 2008, Lies, Damned Lies, and Sarah Palin, Did You Know John McCain Was A POW?

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Apparently some crazy people at the DNC have decided to attempt the herculean endeavor of counting and chronicling all of the lies coming from the McCain campaign. I have no idea how they have time to sleep, but here is what they have so far. They might want to head over to Think Progress, where we learn that even Fox news reporters are calling the McCain campaign liars.

For his part, Andrew Sullivan is chronicling the lies of Sarah Palin, with three initial installments: the lie about firing Monegan, the lie about the Bridge to Nowhere, and the lie about firing the librarian and the police chief.

Maybe this is the McCain campaigns unemployment solution- lie so much that an army of fact checkers is needed to keep up with all the bullshit.

*** Update ***

Sullivan already has two more- the lie about the Endangered Species is #4, and #5 is the Pipeline.

What is so crazy about all this is that we are not dealing with differences of opinion, or spin, or things in which there is some nuance and people can disagree. These are just plain, simple, outright lies.

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36Comments

  1. 1.

    Jake

    September 15, 2008 at 10:37 am

    I assume you saw where Rove said something to the effect of “you just can’t trust all these fact checkers” this weekend?

    These asshats sure do have an interesting relationship with the truth.

  2. 2.

    jrg

    September 15, 2008 at 11:01 am

    The more I watch this election, the sicker I get. The same people that were claiming that people support Obama simply because he’s a “celebrity” are now supporting a “hockey mom” who won’t even take questions from the press.

    Have republicans listened to _anything_ in the past year? I understand and support Obama’s positions because he has articulated them clearly and repeatedly.

    The fact that so many Americans think that Obama and Palin are somehow at parity reflects the fact that they are not paying attention to anything that has been said so far, by either campaign. But then again, these are the same people who listen to Mitt Freaking Romney complain about the “coastal elites”, and they nod their heads in agreement.

    We are a nation of complete f*cking morons.

  3. 3.

    dslak

    September 15, 2008 at 11:07 am

    Speaking of the McCain campaign and lies, I noticed this bit in Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic article on McCain:

    During the three years after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, McCain was the rare Republican who was publicly critical of the administration. . . By the beginning of 2007, his frustration was boiling over publicly.

    The only source Goldberg gives for McCain’s “public” criticism prior to 2007 is McCain himself, in 2008. Is McCain lying about this, too, or is there some record of him publicly criticizing the conduct of the war prior to the Gates hearing?

    Also, Goldberg’s choice of words is problematic here, as he both suggests that McCain was publicly critical of the management of the war prior to 2007, but didn’t express his disapproval publicly until 2007.

  4. 4.

    mantis

    September 15, 2008 at 11:11 am

    Holy shit, even Fox is calling them on their bullshit! Ok, they did once, but that’s still pretty monumental.

  5. 5.

    SpotWeld

    September 15, 2008 at 11:13 am

    I think the amount of untruth that McCain’s campaign has put out has actually reached the point where it is too big to report on in the sound-bite based news stream.

    Short of a 1-hr 20/20 special on McCain and his lies you’ll never be able to cover all of it.

    And that works in McCain’s favor since the right-wing blogs will have a total wing-nut-storm over any news outlet that even suggests such a thing. (Of course a 2-second snark about a terrorist-fist-jab is never a problem… *sigh*)

    I never thought I would ever see a Gish-gallop be the basis for a presidential campaign.

  6. 6.

    George

    September 15, 2008 at 11:42 am

    GO HERE if you want to full B.S. breakdown on this claim:

    http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/tax_tally_trickery.html

  7. 7.

    Stuck in the Fun House

    September 15, 2008 at 11:42 am

    It’s going to be a race to the bottom the next 6 weeks between
    the Mccain?Palin “Lying Liars Express” and our chickenshit press, which as stated, has shown signs of responsibility. Obama shouldn’t even have to get very involved in pointing out the obvious, but until the press fully grows some cajones, they will unfortunately need to.

  8. 8.

    dslak

    September 15, 2008 at 11:45 am

    Fox is changing its tune because Murdoch is hedging his bets in case Obama wins. It’s not because the talking heads that staff Fox’s news have now become concerned with facts. I expect that they received a memo telling them that it was okay to go after McCain’s campaign on this issue.

  9. 9.

    cleek

    September 15, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    oh snap

  10. 10.

    Zifnab25

    September 15, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    So this still raises the question of what is keeping McCain’s poll numbers up.

    Honestly, I don’t think its stupidity that keeps McCain viable. I think its cynicism. There is a core of independent voters who are just too jaded to believe in Obama’s magical unity ponies. It’s not that people trust John McCain so much as they distrust Barack Obama. They just can’t understand that the Clinton Years were good, the Carter years weren’t that bad, and the Reagen-Bush-Bush years really did suck much worse than people remember.

    People just want to stick with the devil they know. And I can’t blame them. The newly empowered Democratic Party has done virtually nothing to convince the public at large that they are anything other than more of the same. Why get chancy with Barack “Secret Muslim Commie-Terrorist” Obama when you can just settle for another four years of Bush?

    People just don’t believe that Obama can or will fix what needs fixing. This is a gap his party has failed to overcome.

  11. 11.

    Svensker

    September 15, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    There’s a charming new anti-Obama push-poll going on in Florida. Here’s C&L.

    Waddya mean, the Carter years weren’t that bad? They were awful. Jimmy is a good man and puts his money where his mouth is, but he was a very bad leader.

    Obama needs to hang this financial meltdown around McSame’s neck.

  12. 12.

    Napoleon

    September 15, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    So this still raises the question of what is keeping McCain’s poll numbers up.

    A good portion of the shitstorm that is brewing about the lies and Palin have basically happened after last work week. I would be surprised if as numbers taken this work week cycle in that he does not take a noticable hit to his numbers.

    In any event I have said at every step that no matter what happens or who the Reps or Dems nominate that the Rep would get at least 47% in November. I simply think that is basically how big their base is.

  13. 13.

    Tony J

    September 15, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Dear WordPress Error,

    The more I watch this election, the sicker I get. The same people that were claiming that people support Obama simply because he’s a “celebrity” are now supporting a “hockey mom” who won’t even take questions from the press.

    It’s the Projection = Protection trick they like to play to lessen their feelings of deep self-loathing that come with being a Republican.

    i.e. They accuse Obama of being a ‘celebrity candidate’, or of being ‘inexperienced’, or of having a crazy preacher and links to extremist groups, etc,etc, wait for his supporters to rightly call bullshit, then create a comically inexperienced celebrity candidate of their own with a scarily crazy preacher and links to secessionist groups, all so they can accuse Democrats of hypocricy when they bring any of these electorally inconvenient facts up in general conversation.

    Shorter – It’s a feature, not a bug.

  14. 14.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    September 15, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    With Wall Street going down like … (heh. A cheap reference to a blow job in this spot would be highly inappropriate.) like nobodies business I wonder what John McCain’s position on Social Security might be. Well, well, well. Another lie? Or is he just flip-flopping? Or maybe former POW John McCain thinks we won’t remember or have a way of checking up on his previous statements?

    I haz Youtubes.

  15. 15.

    liberal

    September 15, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    Napolean wrote,

    I simply think that is basically how big their base is.

    As Billmon pointed out in a DailyKos diary, their “base” is a majority or at least plurality of white voters in every presidential election after 1964 (IIRC).

  16. 16.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    September 15, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    Re: Polls. I had rather a “light bulb over the head moment” this weekend. I was taking a break from housework and watching BBC America when the telephone rang. As is the norm in my cable area the phone number came up on my tv screen. I realized I didn’t know who it was so I ignored it figuring I would check the messages later. EUREKA! We have been harping and harping about how the pollsters are ignoring people with cellphones and only polling those with landlines right? But what about people with landlines AND caller ID who, like me, ignore any number except for those of family and friends. YOU CAN’T POLL VOICE MAIL! And lets face it, in these tough economic times I bet there are millions of people who not only won’t pick up the phone for an unknown number but are down right afraid to (debt collectors and all that). SO the people that are being polled are a) those with landlines and b) those without caller ID, question how big is that demographic and who would like to guess what their average age is? After my eureka moment I no longer worry about the polls and I bet come November I will be proved right and the polling companies are going to have to COMPLETELY change the way they do business.

    That is all. Carry on.

  17. 17.

    dslak

    September 15, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    Litlebit, you’re certainly on to something there, but I still don’t think that’s something on which I would gamble without further information.

    Do the polling organizations provide information on how many mobile phone users they contact, or how many of their calls go unanswered?

  18. 18.

    rawshark

    September 15, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    What is so crazy about all this is that we are not dealing with differences of opinion, or spin, or things in which there is some nuance and people can disagree. These are just plain, simple, outright lies.

    What’s crazy about all this is we are talking about all this. I feel like I’m watching a Tom Tomorrow cartoon.

  19. 19.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    September 15, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    dslak – thinking more about it I think the rabbit hole goes deeper than even I at first thought. Lower income workers “tend” to vote democrat, and right now, they are also those who are suffering most with the economy, ergo they are the one’s most likely to be ignoring phone calls (anyone who isn’t friend or family is probably a credit card company, the mortgage company or a debt collector). How many of those folks who are suffering and who are much more likely to vote Obama have been polled? My guess would be nil.

  20. 20.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    September 15, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    PS) that Megyn Kelly video is a thing of beauty.

  21. 21.

    Napoleon

    September 15, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    Litlebritdifrnt, on your caller ID theory the last cycle I got called twice and the caller ID made it clear it was a poll (at least it was to me). One was an outfit whose name I do not recall, but it was clear it was a poll (it was something like “Midwest Opinion Pollsters”) and the other was a SUSA that came in with the name of its local sponser as something like WKYC/Survey USA Poll.

  22. 22.

    stickler

    September 15, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    Litbrit:

    The problem with your theory in the last few years goes something like this — pollsters aren’t able to capture the opinions of those without landlines, who happen to by and large be progressive, young, technologically savvy voters who trend very strongly Democratic.

    And they also tend to forget to show up on Election Day.

    We’ll see if this year is any different. Obama’s sure giving it the good old college try, in any case. Maybe this is the year.

  23. 23.

    Nikolita

    September 15, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    The list is up to 76 flip-flops. Courtesy of The Carpetbagger Report:

    http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/flipflops

  24. 24.

    Alan

    September 15, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    The greater the influence of the Religious Right within the GOP the greater the amount of lies that emanate from the GOP. It’s one of the main reasons I’m voting a straight Democratic ticket in November…as opposed to my voting straight GOP tickets for the 25 years prior.

  25. 25.

    Shaggy

    September 15, 2008 at 5:54 pm

    Stickler and Litbrit,

    I would like to break this down a little more for you and anyone else who might be interested. (When the polls stopped making sense a few weeks ago, I did a little research.)

    In 2006, the CDC estimated that approx. 12% of American adults were cell-only (no landlines). In 2007, that estimate was up to 16.8%.

    So, the landline loss in one year was nearly 5% of the American eligible electorate (18 and over) for the time period 2006-2007.

    If we continue this trend (let’s even be a little conservative; maybe there has been a leveling-off in the loss of landlines), perhaps that figure, one year later in 2008, is 20%. This means perhaps 20% of American adults are out of reach by pollsters.

    This number may or may not be a big deal, depending on whether or not the people out of reach are representative of the entire population. The CDC tells is they are not. Cell-only adults are disproportionally: young (18-29), low-income minorities, or people who share a home with other adults to whom they are not related.

    These do not look like McCain voters to me.

    All of that is not to say they would mostly vote for Obama, but introducing such a huge source of error has got to reduce the accuracy of these polls. It just makes the whole business, in my opinion, much less predictable. I have also seen other indicators that tell me the results of recent polls are, to say the least, a little wonky.

    For example, how can the Obama campaign be registering so many new Democrats, yet this race still be basically even? Are these new Democrats mostly cell-only? Or is there some other explanation? I just don’t know.

    According to some, one reason that I think bears repeating (no matter how uncomfortable it makes us), is racism. Most of it in this country, at this point, is rather subtle. I live in the deep south, and grew up in the “near south”. Sometimes I swear it is in the blood, but something that takes a while to see in a given individual.

    “This is Your Nation on White Privilege”, an essay recently written by Tim Wise, sums up the subtle racism of recent events very well.

    It is here: http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege

    Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves this question: if Obama were (100%) white, do you think the contest would be this close? Or do you think Obama would be slaughtering him?

  26. 26.

    NYT

    September 15, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    “jrg Says:

    The more I watch this election, the sicker I get. The same people that were claiming that people support Obama simply because he’s a “celebrity” are now supporting a “hockey mom” who won’t even take questions from the press”

    McCain’s celebrity ads were probably run after he decided to go with Palin as innoculation against how they intended to position Palin. Palin is very prominent on the entertainment news shows (E! news, Insider etc) and they are obviously giving special access by the campaign.

    McCain isn’t just going after the low information voters. He is going after the NO information voters. I suspect this is a large bloc.

    The bloggers write about the balance on shows like Hardball or the Situation report. It doesn’t matter. People who watch these shows made up their minds ages ago. Palin is reaching people who could not tell McCain from Obama.

  27. 27.

    Anonymous visitor from Sadly,No!

    September 15, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    The evening sun touched gently on the lies of Sarah Palin
    the roof top where she climbed when all the laughter grew too loud
    bowed and curtsied to the man who reached and offered her his hand,
    And he led her down to the long white car that waited past the crowd.

  28. 28.

    STE

    September 15, 2008 at 6:56 pm

    Check out SarahTalkExpress.com . It’s a digg-like site to organize Palin news stories and track her lies. Post news stories debunking Palin’s unfriendly relationship with the truth and vote on your favorite posts.

  29. 29.

    Crusty Dem

    September 15, 2008 at 7:23 pm

    ugh. I’m so tired of this stuff. I’m done blaming anyone but the idiotic American populace, if you can watch this campaign and vote for McCain, you deserve what you get. The rest of us, not so much..

    Also, Shorter Pirate Sarah Palin:

    “AARRRRRRGGH! I’m bad at this.”

  30. 30.

    NonWonderDog

    September 15, 2008 at 8:22 pm

    The first one on that list is just hilarious. Obama is secretly anti-immigrant because he introduced amendments into the immigration bill that were too pro-immigrant! He knew that the senate wouldn’t vote for a pro-immigrant bill, so his admendments to make the immigration bill more pro-immigrant were an obvious attempt to sink the bill! (But Obama has never influenced any major legislation, of course.)

    Meanwhile, McCain voted against the immigration bill. Because it was too pro-immigrant.

  31. 31.

    jcricket

    September 15, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    What’s crazy about all this is we are talking about all this. I feel like I’m watching a Tom Tomorrow cartoon.

    I know, it’s sad. In the same cartoon the penguin would also probably point out that Republican lying has a loooong tradition. It’s now a core feature, not a bug, of the party. Bush and Cheney have been lying with almost everything they’ve done since they got into office – the Iraq War, the impact of the tax cuts, torture, the impact of fiscal regulations, global warming, FISA, etc. There is nothing of importance they will not flat out lie about.

    Palin’s just all that lying distilled into one tummy-tucked little package.

  32. 32.

    Alex B

    September 16, 2008 at 7:52 pm

    Maybe this is the McCain campaigns unemployment solution- lie so much that an army of fact checkers is needed to keep up with all the bullshit.

    Sometimes, I wish people would credit to John McCain when he is telling the truth. I genuinely believe that when he says – ‘I will get government out of your way and stand at the side of the American people’ — well, I’d take him at his word.

    He WILL stand at your side…

    …when you watch the factory in your town being padlocked shut because his Open Markets policy has shipped the more American jobs overseas.

    He WILL stand at your side…

    …when you sit crying at your kitchen table because his promised further deregulation of the markets allows your Mutual Funds to evaporate overnight.

    He WILL stand at your side…

    …when the Lenders send men to remove you from your home because your once-secure mortgage has overwhelmed you.

    He will stand at your side through all of that. Why can’t people take him at this word?

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Et Tu, FoxNews And Karl Rove? Then Fall, Señor McCain! | THE GUN TOTING LIBERAL™ says:
    September 15, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    […] Balloon Juice’s John Cole: “… Maybe this is the McCain campaigns unemployment solution- lie so much that an army of fact checkers is needed to keep up with all the bullshit. …” […]

  2. McCain’s Pathological Lying Creating a Cottage Industry « SpiderFarmer says:
    September 16, 2008 at 1:25 am

    […] John Cole of Balloon Juice has some great stuff to say about the election and the lying liars who are trying to steal it. Here’s an example. […]

  3. Positive Liberty » My Endorsement (of a Voting Strategy) says:
    September 16, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    […] Let’s also consider how he’s conducted his campaign for president. Until recently, I’d thought the whole process had been surprisingly clean. Yet something seems to have happened around the time of the conventions, and while the Democrats have stuck to talking about issues, the Republicans have done little more than tell one jaw-dropping lie after another. It’s been truly disgusting. You know you’ve crossed the line when even Karl Rove gets squeamish about your campaign tactics. (Yes, Rove blasted Obama too. But that’s just Rove being Rove.) Something has to give here. […]

  4. Blue Herald » You Say Potato, I Say Conscienceless Sleazebag says:
    September 17, 2008 at 4:12 am

    […] First, from “moderate” blog Obsidian Wings, here’s Eric Martin: You know you’re setting a new standard for shameless dishonesty when even Fox News and Karl Rove call you out. Karl Freakin Rove! The man who took the baton from Lee Atwater and [deleted] it up a rat’s [deleted]. I apologize for the vulgar imagery, but John McCain refused to do a series of town hall appearances with me, so I had no choice. It is now patently obvious that the McCain camp is committed to a strategy of lying big and small from now until November (here’s one of the latest, a rerun of one of their greatest hits and a foolish attempt to count to infinity). What is perhaps more significant is the reason for McCain’s mendacity: running on the issues is a losing play. He’s scared of a straight-up contest. […]

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