Let The Lying Begin!
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As the judge allegedly said at the beginning of each trail, “Let the lying begin!”
Semantic slight-of-hand and prolific propaganda will be the norm this 2012 presidential election cycle, which most pundits agree began in December of 2008. Already various factions have donned snake-oiled overcoats with the intent of using the entire Catalog of Canards to slither (back) into the White House. Smooth-tongued and misleading sound bites, crafted by marketing professionals in the political prostitution industry, are dangled like shiny objects before child-like Motor Voter masses. An odd effect of such corrupting campaigning is that the glibbest contenders are the most readily electable.
Hence, expect a showdown between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.
In Shooting The Bull, I remind readers that the reason anyone in politics lies is to get something they could not if they were honest, such as getting elected. Since the alleged leader of the free world – or more accurately the leader of the allegedly free world – holds the power of life, death and (even worse) taxes over a vast portion of the population, honesty is not an option. Presidential candidates have and will continue to nuance everything, misrepresent opponents, spread the manure of misinformation, and distract anyone who recalls their actual voting records.
In this, Mister Obama’s climb will make Sisyphus’ look like a stroll.
Indeed, Obama has a veritable litter box of misdeeds which GOP operatives will sift on a regular basis. Mitt Romney has prematurely recalled Obama’s prediction that failure to repair the economy in three years is justification for presidential unemployment. There is the unfinished matter of Fast and Furious – a Watergate-level cover-up – which the lead congressional investigator will likely relaunch later in 2012. In play too will be Obama’s trillion dollars of ineffectual spending that failed to stimulate anyone outside of SEIU offices.
An entire election cycle could be spent on Solyndra alone.
Yet nobody in the GOP field has political baggage small enough to fit in the overhead bin of their campaign jet. Romney has a left-of-center past from attending Mass. Paul’s naivety on the realities of geopolitics frightens anyone outside of Al Qaeda. Santorum’s and Bachman’s social conservatism causes libertarian-minded independents to squirm. Perry doesn’t perspire in the Texas summer heat, but wilts every time he speaks. And Gingrich will likely self-destruct in a blaze of incoherent neo-conservative wonkery reminiscent of FDRs free market meddling.
He makes Jimmy McMillan look credible by comparison.
Republican candidates have already initiated the time honored tradition of shooting off their toes, mainly through mutual character assassination. Whomever wins the GOP nominations – a Pyrrhus-level victory – will limp into battle against Obama, who has the luxury of ducking confrontation for the next six months. Battered and penniless, this unfortunate Republican still has better than even odds going against Obama, who received less than 53% of the popular vote in 2008, and that was against an old, weak and philosophically erratic opponent with a lightening rod running mate.
However, Obama has the media to help peddle his propaganda, and such leveled odds make even bookies sweat.
In Shooting The Bull, I concluded that the media is no longer in control of the national conversation. But they can start conversations and time them for maximum political damage. One of their objectives is to pick the Republican nominee. Before the first Iowa caucus commenced, a CNN reporter declared that Mitt Romney was the “presumed Republican front-runner,” which pre-positioned Mitt as CNN’s choice (a cluster of polls released that same morning showed a three-way dead horse race). For a few months many media outlets – none accused of having conservative or libertarian leanings – have been echoing one another’s notion that Mitt is every Republican’s second choice, and thus the inevitable winner (the Catalog of Canards declares this to the “The Lie of Invalidatable Conclusions: Pronouncing with certainty what has never been and can never be proven”).
The media has made their choice and are trying to stick Republicans with it.
One new element makes this election year different. For the first time in modern memory, there is a lexicon for political propaganda and a citizen’s media ready to use it. The Catalog of Canards, included at the end of Shooting The Bull and available online, gives voters the tools to publicly identify how candidates, party bosses, pundits and other purveyors of poppycock mislead the public. Analysis once ineptly handled by the mainstream media will now be the pastime of the hoi polloi. Politically aware non-patricians will decide the election by eviscerating whichever candidate lies the most, or at least lies the worst.
Let the lying begin, and let us find joy in dissecting it.
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