Politifact has deemed the following the lie of the year:
It was a lie told in the critical state of Ohio in the final days of a close campaign — that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China. It originated with a conservative blogger, who twisted an accurate news story into a falsehood. Then it picked up steam when the Drudge Report ran with it. Even though Jeep’s parent company gave a quick and clear denial, Mitt Romney repeated it and his campaign turned it into a TV ad.
And they stood by the claim, even as the media and the public expressed collective outrage against something so obviously false.
People often say that politicians don’t pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election.
PolitiFact has selected Romney’s claim that Barack Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China” at the cost of American jobs as the 2012 Lie of the Year.
Virtually everything he said was a lie, so I am not sure how you choose one over the other.
James K. Polk, Esq.
That whole 47% seemed rather earnest to me…
TrabbsBoy
Polifact tries to regain credibility when it no longer matters.
PsiFighter37
Who gives a shit what the fact-checkers think? They’re a bunch of equivocating turds who try not to hurt anyone’s fee-fees too hard.
PaulW
The easiest lie to refute is the one Politifact will promote. All the other lies remain hidden in the haze of “oh dear we need to be fair and balanced and call them ‘opinions’ rather than ‘b-llsh-t'” that the self-appointed fact-checkers use as guidelines.
Keith
My pick would have been “both sides do it.”
Joey Maloney
“Every word he spoke was a lie, including ‘forty-seven’ and ‘percent’,” with apologies to Mary McCarthy.
PaulW
Why are we getting warnings about missing arguments? I think our arguments are spot-on! /rimshot
dmsilev
Personally, I’m going to go with “fact-checkers matter” as the lie, or perhaps delusion, of the year.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the xenophobia has an appropriately Montgomery Burns-ish twist to it (“The Italians are coming! Smithers, send a wire to President Harding!”), but I gotta stay with the welfare ad. Of course, pointing out racism makes the Village Rotarians very nervous.
Joey Maloney
Whoa! Best FYWP evah
dmsilev
I’m not sure I like this new ‘Warning: Missing argument 2’ commenter. Very repetitive.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Keep in mind that the Jeep ad was released late, apparently in an effort to thwart efforts to refute it (which, oddly enough, failed). So they knew damned well it was false. But we haz the innernets now.
In hindsight, the Romney camp’s strategy really didn’t go much beyond “Surf into the Oval Office on a Tsunami of Bullshit”. Worked for Reagan, didn’t it?
Probably planned to govern that way, too. Much as Reagan did.
PsiFighter37
Looks like WordPress is rebelling hardcore right now…
Zam
@Keith: I would give anything for that to be the lie of the year.
MattF
Lying was the core of the Romney campaign strategy. Period. The only time Romney ever retreated was over the 47% remark– which, of course, was the only time he was telling the truth as he saw it.
Gravenstone
Perhaps this is simply a matter of “last lie standing”?
Culture of Truth
Q: Why did Politifact choose this one out of all the others?
A: Because even Chrysler, red of blood, all-merkin, applepiesh, hotdoggy, businessmisters, said it was a lie.
NonyNony
Ah, this is one where he slandered a multinational corporation and forced that corporation to send out a spokesperson to say “he is lying” in corporate spokesperson-speak.
I think we can see why this one would rank high up there for Politifact.
gene108
Well, they could’ve made Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment the lie of the year.
At least they had the decency to use an actual lie for their lie of the year.
Wasn’t it last year or the year before they made Democrats saying Republicans would end Medicare with changing it to a voucher based program the Lie of the Year?
Or was it another fact checking group?
I can’t remember.
Point is, at least this year the honed in on an actual bonafide lie.
J R in WV
You could tell when Willard was lying – his lips were moving, and he was smiling that terrible false smile.
It is true that Politico just picked one, but to pick all of them would diminish the award somehow, and while everyone can see that this was plainly false, many of the most pernicious lies could be debated by people who believe the thrust of Republican lies.
So I’m good with this choice, even though it does minimize the fact that it is all lies, all the time from most all Republicans.
But some people actually believe the innertubez can only tell the truth, so what are you gonna do?
NonyNony
Whoa – FYWP just barfed up the PHP it had for dinner last night.
MFA
They likely chose it because they think this particular obvious lie cost him Ohio, and therefore any chance to win the electorate.
Linda Featheringill
I wondered why the MSM was so upset over that lie and so tolerant of the other lies.
Zam
Oh good other people see this warning too. For a moment I thought I broke BJ.
Cermet
Here is a complete lie by Politi-lie … uh, fact. Ohio did not matter at all for President Obama – when the President won Florida, that made both Ohio and even Virginia to became totally irrelevant.
Culture of Truth
In the spirit of Hannukah, what makes this lie different from all other lies?
Oh wait, that’s a seder. Never mind.
japa21
Romney really didn’t pay a price for any of his lies, including this one. Ohio was already lost to him so his staff decided to go all out on a Hail Mary kind of strategy. It didn’t work, but it wasn’t as if his lie (or lies) actually cost him the election.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Linda Featheringill: I deleted my comment ’cause I thought I somehow broke the blog, but this one is safer than a lot of the others, notably the welfare ad. Pointing out racism makes the Village Rotarians very nervous.
Mudge
Yes choosing the worst lie is tough..but the prestigious “Liar of the Year” award has yet to be announced. That should be an easy choice.
schrodinger's cat
I see that Tunch has finally released John and is sitting on the server instead. I am getting some weird warnings over the comments. Please feed the kitteh, ASAP.
Lex
@Keith: You, sir, win the Internet. Now, everyone give a cat a cheeseburger so we can all go do something productive.
Roger Moore
You pick the one with the best documentation and the worst results, which seems to be what they did.
Zifnab25
Over a month after the election is over, and Politifact finally feels secure enough to start calling Romney out.
SO BRAVE!
Cervantes
Now hold on here — he did say he wouldn’t release his tax returns, and he didn’t.
So that was true.
Snarki, child of Loki
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: ” the Romney camp’s strategy really didn’t go much beyond “Surf into the Oval Office on a Tsunami of Bullshit”.”
Yes, but you should not go against a Hawai’ian when Surfing is on the line.
gogol's wife
@Joey Maloney:
I thought, “including ‘a,’ ‘and,’ and ‘the,'” and then I thought, better read the thread, somebody will get this in 6.
Anonymous
If Politifact’s lie of the year next year isn’t something some liberal said, I will buy everyone here a pony. And a rainbow.
GregB
Please stop with these partisan attacks you are making Cokie Roberts very uncomfortable.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
The errors on older comments are disappearing, so I’d guess that something in the database is taking a long time to update.
Balconesfault
I think that picking this one is so perfectly illustrative of the Romney campaign – grabbed from a nebulous internet source, slapped down by facts almost as soon as it surfaced, and the Romney campaign went ahead and featured it in their ads even as news media was pointing out that it wasn’t true.
For just sheer, brass balls brazen lying, this one was pretty hard to top.
schrodinger's cat
The Republicans must give great parties with rivers of booze, that must be the reason the Villagers are always shilling for them and are so careful not to upset them or hurt their fee-fees.
schrodinger's cat
The Republicans must give great parties with rivers of booze, that must be the reason the Villagers are always shilling for them and are so careful not to upset them or hurt their fee-fees.
danimal
I’m disappointed. I was rooting for this one.
It’s a flat-out lie, he tried to make it a major part of his campaign, and it has an ugly base of racial resentment lurking right behind a thin layer of deniability.
But, as Cole alludes, how do you reduce a liar to just one, specific lie?
schrodinger's cat
Tunchen has been fed, the blog is back to normal. Sorry for the double comment, I don’t know how that happened. I blame WP or Tunch or both.
Brachiator
That Romney was a liar was, I suppose, noteworthy.
But what amazed me is that he was such a shameless liar, and that he refused to back down from his lies when they were so blatant and so easily refuted.
He sincerely believed the Fox News promise, that lies don’t matter, that the wingnut base would easily lap up whatever crap conservatives spewed, that other people would be too confused to separate fact from fiction, and that the media would be too timid to call bullshit for what it was.
And what amazes me now is that Romney is still in shock that his bullshit didn’t work.
Brachiator
WP seems to be going nuts.
Yutsano
@schrodinger’s cat: Apparently FYWP dipped into the nog this morning.
The Dangerman
Lies of the Year:
(1) Romney saved the Auto industry through managed bankruptcy
(2) Tunch went on a diet
Chyron HR
@danimal:
Yeah, but Those People are all lazy, shiftless moochers regardless, so PolitiFact rates it as HALF TRUE(tm).
Rosalita
That lie was the icing on the shit cake of lies he told throughout the campaign in terms of timing. I’d say the 47% lie was the most ugly.
rikyrah
when history looks at this campaign, I do believe Steve Benen will be seen as a hero. While the MSM did their best to ignore that Willard was the first post-truth candidate, Benen, and his weekly chronicle of Willard’s Lies, just kept on building and building the obvious.
ThresherK
@TrabbsBoy: In the far north country of New England we chatted a bit with a fellow who turned out to be a volunteer fireman.
Half-sarcastically, given the narrow and winding roads, water system, terrain, and long winters, he joked “We’re really good at putting out foundations.”
Hence, my favorite quote for anybody who can be counted on to only do what’s expected of them after it no longer matters, to save their reputaion.
Amir Khalid
@Balconesfault:
Well. the Mitt campaign did say they weren’t going to be bossed around by the fact-checkers. Nobody was going to tell their big, badass, presidential Mitt what was truthful enough for him to say, nosirree!
schrodinger's cat
@The Dangerman: Tunch is not fat, he is in shape, round is a shape.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
Apparently it’s just had another nip. That must be some tasty eggnog.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: Extra rum in it as well.
MikeJ
@NonyNony:
IIRC, a Chrysler VP called it “bullshit”. Which isn’t the normal corporate spokesperson-speak.
Kane
This lie was so obvious with the public that not even Politifact could muck up the water.
Higgs Boson's Mate
What bothers me about the latest go-round is that unchallenged lying became institutionalized as a campaign tactic. To me, it wasn’t just the Jeep story, it was also that neither Romney nor Ryan were ever pressed for the details of their respective plans for the nation. Both of them offered nebulous generalities and the media fell all over itself to tout their seriousness and their economic acumen. The putative emperor didn’t just have no clothes he was waving his dick at us and daring anyone to call him on it.
jeffreyw
Lists? We don’t need no steenkin lists! We have teh Google.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Snarki, child of Loki:
“ROMNEY DON’T SURF” would be an excellent band name…
Kip the Wonder Rat
@Culture of Truth:
Maybe that was part of it. I think another part of why the press finally called out this lie is that no other Republican/conservative entity that was recognizably outside of the campaign was willing to endorse it.
The press never declares that a Republican is lying if another Republican, who the press considers somehow independent, is willing espouse it, too. For instance, the press never called any of number of things in the Ryan budget a lie because other Republicans who were not directly involved in the campaign were willing to say that Ryan’s plan was good policy. See, if two Republican agree to say something, but the rest of the sane world says it’s a lie, well then, that just policy differences.
Of course, if two Democrats agree on a lie, well, that’s just lying.
jeffreyw
This is not arguments, arguements are down the hall. First door on the left. Sorry for the inconvenience!
japa21
Romney never paid a price for any of his lies. Politico makes it sound like he did pay a price for this one (which apparently is the only reason they singled it out).
He didn’t lose Ohio because of the ad. Ohio was already lost and his staff decided to go for a Hail Mary with this ad.
Now the question can and should be asked, “Should he have paid a price for all his lies?”
IMO, the answer is “yes” but because a) the media chose not to point out the lies and b) a lot of people were looking for reasons (other than they hate the blah guy) to vote for Romney many people believed the lies.
Tonal Crow
Whaaat? The lie of the
yearlast 40 years was the media’s implication that Republicans should be treated as anything but objects to be pointed at while laughing hysterically.smintheus
Romney’s welfare reform ads were worse lies in almost every way, were repeated over and over for weeks…and were racist dog whistles to boot.
Maude
@schrodinger’s cat:
Tunch is floofy.
J R in WV
After careful reconsideration, I think you all are right and that the worst lies were the combination of welfare lies, because of the nano-micron thick cover beneath which was the racist pools of bubbling filth. And of course, the 47% was part of that syndrome.
But the Jeep lie was so much easier to point out, and so much clearer from the outside of the echo chamber that I understand why they selected it for special attention.
Keep on banging on the Republican’ts box, all!
And thanx for your attention, however brief…
NonyNony
@J R in WV:
But the welfare lies were lies about government. Lies about things that Democrats and Republicans argue about. Therefore instead of being “lies” it’s more “Democrats walk like this, but Republicans walk like this” in the eyes of the fact checkers. Calling out the welfare lie would therefore be a “value judgment” to take the word of the Democrat over a Republican – even if the facts all support the Democrat you’re taking sides.
But the Chrysler lie was like taking the word of a Democrat and a corporation (who as people get to count as are honorary Republicans) over a Republican. Since “both sides” said it was a lie, so it must have been a HUGE LIE. Therefore Lie of the Year.
For the same reason “You Didn’t Build That” wasn’t a contender for Lie of the Year. Because Democrats said one thing and Republicans said another so that’s just “politics”.
Fred
The lies and doublebackflip self contradictory lies were all of a muddled piece. In the end who can tell what was a lie and why should anyone care? Certainly Mitt didn’t care. That was his problem.
I think it was Thom Hartmann that said, Mitt has to live with the fact that he sold his soul and it turned out not to be worth a thing.
TG Chicago
@Anonymous: Agreed. And in fact, if Obama had lost the election, they’d have picked something he said to be Lie of the Year.
Seriously, if Romney had won, do you think they’d have the balls to call the new president-elect on a Lie of the Year? No way.
Patricia Kayden
Romneybot lied so much during his campaign that I agree with Cole that it’s impossible to focus on just one lie. It would be easier to figure out what he said that was true, if anything.
TheronWare
Hmmm, I wonder what happened to the sin of bearing false witness.
Patricia Kayden
@Zifnab25: Ha! Your comment gets two big thumbs up.
ankh hotep
@MikeJ: By Bernie Woodall DETROIT, Nov 1 (Reuters) – A Chrysler executive told Donald Trump in a Tweet on Thursday that the real estate executive and television personality was “full of shit” for repeating a notion that Chrysler is shipping U.S. Jeep production to China, which the automaker refutes. Ralph Gilles, the head of product design for Chrysler, became the second top Chrysler executive in three days to strongly deny the claim, which was first made by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last week to a crowd in Ohio. Trump, from his Twitter account, said, “Obama is a terrible negotiator. He bails out Chrysler and now Chrysler wants to send all Jeep manufacturing to China–and will!” To which Gilles, from his Twitter account, responded to Trump: “You are full of shit!” In a second Tweet, Gilles added: “I apologize for my language, but lies are just that, lies.”
Easily the most honest statement heard in the entire campaign.