One Lies, The Others Swear To It

How is this spin suddenly everywhere, Journo-List-style? It's as if there really were a vast right-wing noise machine blasting faxes to gated communities nationwide.

The president didn’t win with a ‘magnificent’ get-out-the-vote operation. It was his relentless negative ads that discouraged and disillusioned the Republican and independent voters Romney needed, says Michael Medved.

For Medved to bitch about negative attack campaigning (i.e., showing Romney for what he is) when the Prez has been vilified & demonized w/ the fantasies & delusions of a paranoid right-wing is just another peak reached in his attempt to climb all the mountains of hypocrisy.

Upon reaching this summit, M.M. turns on his projector & lets Karl Rove shine his light through:

He and his supporters succeeded in discouraging and disillusioning the Republican and independent voters whom Romney needed for victory. In post-election comments, GOP strategist Karl Rove argued that the Obama campaign succeeded by deliberately “suppressing the vote,” a response to Democratic accusations of Republican “voter suppression” schemes. Although most opinion leaders dismissed Rove’s observation as the sour grapes whining of a notably sore loser, it’s impossible to argue with his numbers: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan drew 1.3 million fewer votes than the allegedly hapless ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Given the undeniable fact that some significant number of voters who backed Obama last time switched their support to Romney in 2012, helping to produce the president’s 7.6 million decline in support, several million Americans who cast ballots for McCain-Palin four years ago must have chosen to stay home for this election.

To which we can only bold that one admission of straight-up protection/reaction & add: So? (Under our breath we muttered, "Fuck both of you gasbags.")

The most creative (& revealing) take on the GOP blast fax that generated all this (Seriously. Where did it come from?) has to be Grover Norquist & his "poopy-head" entry.Elections don't matter any more. All the lower marginal rates talk is pure crap too. All of it:Hey America! Remember the good old days when if a man lied to another man's face he'd be taken to the street & horsewhipped? The days when a flim-flamming snake-oil salesman would be run out of town on a rail, decorated in tar & feathers? Where has that America gone, America?

Even more amusing is the decision to rationalize or explain or whatever Romney's loss by crying that, in a campaign, campaigning is unfair. The Obama campaign had the gall to keep their mailing lists up to date, for example, as we noted yesterday. And more than once the scurrilous accusation Obama made ("Romney caused cancer!") is followed by the whiner saying the Romney campaign didn't answer the scurrility. Conclusion: The Republican campaign sucked, & Obama approved this negative message. We can only wonder why the Romney campaign never responded. Could it be that Romney did cause cancer?

Just one more example of research: A paragraph or four from the snooty version, as typed by whoever drew the short straw-man at Ye Olde American Spectator.

Why was a record of economic blight and general discontent insufficient to unseat Obama?

Obama ran a highly negative campaign, correctly deducing that he could maintain his coalition of constituencies even as he alienated nearly half the country with his resort to class warfare. In this he was aided by Romney's tactical mistakes and an Obama-compliant media.

Romney, depicted relentlessly by the Obama campaign as an out-of-touch, stone-hearted, job-exporting Bourbon and robber baron (who has actually given vast sums to charitable causes, including the fortune he inherited), made the tactical error of doing little to counter the fusillade of character assassination during the vital May-July period. He dealt with confidence-eroding allegations about his time at Bain Capital in a dilatory fashion. Achieving a stellar first presidential debate performance, he failed to press his advantage in the two subsequent debates.

Obama also calculated extremely well how to leverage the American demographic shift of recent years. He was able to keep the constituencies he attracted in 2008 with promises and hand-outs. Offensive utterances on rape by Republicans Senate candidates Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin eroded the female vote for Romney. And, perhaps most importantly, Romney faltered not only tactically but strategically when it came to the fast growing Latino vote.

Drag out the multi-syllabics if you like, but you can't convince us that somehow both horses in the race lost.