Mitt Romney vs fact-checkers: the welfare law dispute
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Robert Reich Guest blogger
鈥淲e鈥檙e not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,鈥� says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster.
A half dozen fact-checking organizations and websites have refuted Romney鈥檚 claims that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law and will cut Medicare benefits by $216 billion.
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Last Sunday鈥檚 New York Times even reported on its front page that Romney has been 鈥渇alsely charging鈥� President Obama with removing the work requirement. Those are strong words from the venerable Times. Yet Romney is still making the false charge. Ads containing it continue to be aired.
Presumably the Romney campaign continues its false claims because they鈥檙e effective. But this raises a more basic question: How can they remain effective when they鈥檝e been so overwhelmingly discredited by the media?
The answer is the Republican Party has developed three means of bypassing the mainstream media and its fact-checkers.
The first is by repeating big lies so often in TV spots 鈥� financed by a mountain of campaign money 鈥� that the public can no longer recall (if it ever knew) that the mainstream media and its fact-checkers have found them to be lies.
The second is by discrediting the mainstream media 鈥� asserting it鈥檚 run by 鈥渓iberal elites鈥� that can鈥檛 be trusted to tell the truth. Newt Gingrich charged at a Republican debate last January, in what鈥檚 become a standard GOP attack line.
The third is by using its own misinformation outlets 鈥� led by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his yell-radio imitators, book publisher Regnery, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, along with a right-wing blogosphere 鈥� to spread the lies, or at least spread doubt about what鈥檚 true.
Together, these three mechanisms are creating a parallel Republican universe of Orwellian dimension 鈥� where anything can be asserted, where pollsters and political advisers are free to create whatever concoction of lies will help elect their candidate, and where 鈥渇act-checkers鈥� are as irrelevant and intrusive as is the truth.
Democracy cannot thrive in such a place. To the contrary, history teaches that this is where demagogues take root.
The Romney campaign has decided it won鈥檛 be dictated by fact-checkers. But a society without trusted arbiters of what is true and what is false is vulnerable to every lie imaginable.
