Republicans think Americans are too stupid to recognize a lie

By Richard K. Barry

A short while ago, President Obama made the reasonable point in an interview that American policy-makers have been lazy about attracting businesses to our country. This is exactly what he said:

We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted, well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.

Seems pretty clear that he was pointing to a certain complacency among those in government responsible for making investors understand that America is a good place to set up shop. It's clear if you're not a lying right-wing bastard, who has a compulsive need to contort the truth for narrow political gain.

One of the first lying liars to enter the fray on this was Charles Krauthammer, who said this on Fox:

When you call your own country "lazy" when you are abroad and you call it unambitious and soft when you're home, I think what you are showing is not tough love, but ill-concealed contempt.

Obviously, Obama didn't call the citizens of his own country lazy, but, hey, who needs the truth when bullshit is so much more useful? (For a great take, see Michael's post here). 

And then came GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who just couldn't help himself, so he had to take Obama's comments out of context and put them in a political ad (see below).


Remember, Obama's words in this clip are cited above. That's the complete statement. What Perry is doing, what Romney did in his own ad, what the eventual GOP nominee will do, is smash the truth because these guys don't think the truth matters. They either don't think Americans are smart enough to know the difference between lying and telling the truth or think that Americans won't care. 

I have a good feeling they are wrong about that.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)