Post Truth Politics

You know we're pretty well over the edge when Neil Newhouse (Romney campaign pollster) says, "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

From Slacktivist (linking to Political Animal - Steve Benen):

Over the past 30 weeks, Mitt Romney has told lie after lie after lie: I, II, III, IV, V, VI,VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII,XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.

Click those links. Read the lists. List after list of lie after lie. Hundreds of them — 533, to be exact, although Benen does not make any claim to providing a comprehensive chronicle.

And to put it all together, Mr James Fallows:

Reporters are happiest, safest-feeling, and most comfortable when in the mode of he-said, she-said. "The president's critics claim that he was born in Kenya; administration spokesmen deny the charge." But when significant political players are willing to say things that flat-out are not true -- and when they're not slowed down by demonstrations of their claims' falseness -- then reporters who stick to he-said, she-said become accessories to deception. This is the problem The Atlantic's James Bennet discussed from Tampa yesterday, in a dispatch about the Republicans' false-but-endlessly-repeated claim that the Obama administration is coddling welfare recipients by dropping requirements that they work.