MORE EXAMPLES OF THE UNTRUTHS BEING OFFERED BY THE GOP CANDIDATES

…Washington Post Opinion writer, Catherine Rampell

 

Another pair of eyes and ears to support that the Republican candidates are offering false information.

 

I have found that in doing research for my Blog, I have continued more and more to read the weekly articles written by Catherine Rampell, a nationally syndicated opinion writer for The Washington Post.

 

In her latest column regarding the latest GOP, CNBC Debate, she was so spot-on that I decided that I just had to pass her observations on to my readers.  In the following, I will use much of her material with my own comments or added points.  But the points of her article are what I have been trying to convey to my readers for years.

 

To demonstrate those points, Ms. Rampell shows how some of the Republican candidates have performed in all the GOP debates to date.  She has chosen to communicated her views as the “lessons learned” by the candidates for offering their questionable answers to the various debate questions.  Each “Lesson” is shown with actual examples from the last three debates.  So here goes:

 

“Lesson No. 1 [for the candidates]: Lie, but lie confidently. Look straight into the camera, and with complete conviction, say something that is not true. Maybe your lies will get fact-checked later, but if your certainty can sufficiently excite pundits in the interim, no one will care (or notice) that you lied.”

 

After making this statements she offered the following as examples of the candidates having learned from “Lesson No. 1:”

 

·       “We saw this strategy successfully executed in the second Republican debate, when Carly Fiorina confidently described a horrifying undercover Planned Parenthood video.

The video footage in question turned out not to exist. (At best, she was describing a reenactment.) But by the time her statements were checked, Fiorina had been anointed the winner of the debate, thanks largely to the riveting & shocking sound bite. Since then, any time someone has called her out on this missing footage, she has just claimed media bias (see Lesson No. 3)”.

 

·       “Donald Trump denied ever taking a dig at Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, even though the dig in question came from Trump’s Web site.”

 

·       “Ben Carson denied having any “involvement” with a sketchy maker of nutritional supplements, even though evidence of this involvement (including a video testimonial) is easily findable online.”

 

·       “Chris Christie claimed Social Security money was “stolen” and that the system will be “insolvent” in seven to eight years, even though both claims are totally wrong.”

 

·       “Fiorina recycled a statistic about women’s job losses that Mitt Romney used in 2012 and subsequently abandoned when it, too, was proven very wrong.”

 

After showing all of this, Ms. Rampell gives us: Lesson No. 2: Invent your own math.

 

·       “In recent weeks, Trump has suggested that he can simultaneously cut tax revenue by trillions of dollars, protect entitlements from cuts and balance the budget. He’s also pledged to raise taxes on the rich while simultaneously cutting taxes for the rich.”

“This ”legerdemath”, as a friend of mine put it, has proven successful; despite disobeying all laws of arithmetic, Trump’s policies have been characterized as coherent, fiscally conservative, even populist. Maybe this has something to do with America’s declining math scores.”

 

·       “When Marco Rubio was asked why his tax plan gave the average rich person a bigger tax cut than the average middle-class person in percentage terms, Rubio decided he would just redefine how percentages work. “Five percent of a million is a lot more than 5 percent of a thousand,” he countered triumphantly.”

 

·       “Likewise, after CNBC’s Becky Quick informed Carson that his flat tax would blow a $1.1 trillion hole in the budget and require spending cuts of 40 percent, their exchange went like this:

CARSON: That’s not true, QUICK: That is true, I looked at the numbers, CARSON: When — when we put all the facts down, you’ll be able to see that it’s not true, it works out very well.

So, according to Carson it’s  “Q.E.D.” (That is Carson’s way of saying ‘I win’) ”

Finally, Ms. Rampell gives us: Lesson No. 3: If you can’t think of something better to say, just bash the media.

 

·       “At first it seemed risky when Trump attacked conservative darling and Fox News host Megyn Kelly for asking tough questions during the first debate. But his attacks paid off, earning him several news cycles’ worth of free advertising.”

 

·       “Accordingly, by Wednesday, the candidates had all learned to dodge difficult questions by accusing the moderators of bias. Usually, the charge was that they were too liberal. (Yes, CNBC, the channel that launched the Tea Party and employs the United States’ most famous supply-sider, is apparently a commie paradise.) Or they accused the media of not asking substantive questions, right in the middle of ducking substantive questions.”

 

·       “In the end, the biggest applause lines were all for media insults. They [the insults] came from Rubio, Ted Cruz and Christie.”

 

·       “Guess whom CNBC then crowned the winners of the debate? Rubio, Cruz and Christie.”

 

I have blatantly called some of the candidates liars or have hinted at the same, but I must say Ms. Rampell puts the issues out there calmly and honestly without any name calling.  In addition, she has shown excellent examples for supporting her three, “Lessons”.

 

I just felt that it was important to pass on what we all have been watching and hearing from the Republican debates and having it come from someone other than myself..

 

Copyright G.Ater  2015