Damned Rich if Romney Does, Damned Rich If He Doesn't
Posted 07/13/2012 07:19 PM ET
Election '12: The Obama campaign has reached new depths of hypocrisy and mendacity in accusing its GOP opponent of a felony. Mr. President, let he who is without secrets guarded like Fort Knox cast the first stone.
For a Barack Obama operative to accuse Mitt Romney of misrepresenting his chairmanship at Bain Capital to the Securities and Exchange Commission over a decade ago, "which is a felony," as Stephanie Cutter said, reveals the desperation of a presidential re-election campaign that must distract Americans from its dismal economic record.
But it also raises other issues, including: this president's willingness to run on lies, his refusal to practice what he preaches, and the outrageous negligence of the Democrats' powerful lapdogs in the media.
First, the Boston Globe, whose July 12 story Cutter parroted, seemed to be intentionally misleading by saying that, "Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control."
Because of the suddenness with which Romney left Bain to save the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games in 1999, during which ownership was being legally transferred to a group of partners, it would have been out of order — possibly unlawful — for Romney's name not to be on the documents Bain filed with the SEC.
The Washington Post's Fact Checker even slapped the Globe with "Three Pinocchios" and "were tempted to award this claim Four Pinocchios ... ."
This is not the first lie the Obama presidency and campaign have propagated. From claiming that U.S. oil output "is the highest that it's been in eight years" (while oil output on federal lands was falling 275,000 barrels a day), to portraying a company fixer and job creator like Romney as an outsourcer, Obama's untruths are legion.
Why should we nose back into Romney's past when Obama won't release his academic records? University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, in "The Amateur," says Obama avoided fellow academics at lunches and workshops while at the law school, because lacking "any signs of intellectual curiosity or power" he made sure not "to put himself at intellectual risk."
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Only Obama's full academic transcripts will tell whether he got into Columbia and Harvard due to special treatment. The voters have a right to know.
If the media did their job, Cutter's remark would have made this a story about the Obama campaign smearing Romney by spreading a bogus story, then aggressively making false allegations of criminal behavior.
As Politico commented after Cutter's slanderous charge, when it comes to Romney and Bain, "things are reaching the point where the facts don't really matter."
Indeed, that could be a blanket statement about the entire Obama campaign.
