Fiorina doubles down on Planned Parenthood falsehood (outright LIE)

Maddow Blog

One of the amazing things about Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign was its indifference towards the truth. Plenty of politicians lie, but Romney had a unique ability to adopt a post-truth posture.

In the traditional model, a politician would make a claim, wait for it to be discredited, and then move on to the next falsehood. Romney preferred to skip the third part – he’d lie, wait for news organizations to catch the lie, and then effectively declare, “I like the lie, so I’m just going to keep repeating it anyway.”

Yesterday, GOP presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina decided to take the Romney model out for a spin. MSNBC’s Irin Carmon explained:

At Wednesday’s second Republican debate, Carly Fiorina described a secretly recorded video from an anti-abortion group, part of a series that includes Planned Parenthood executives, as showing “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’” She challenged Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama to watch the tapes for themselves.

One problem: No such video exists.

Under the traditional rules, candidates caught telling a falsehood during a nationally televised debate would try to finesse a subtle walk-back. In a case like this, maybe Fiorina would say she was exaggerating for effect, or perhaps speaking metaphorically. Maybe she’d argue that such a scenario could happen, even if she hasn’t seen proof.

But yesterday, Fiorina instead stuck to the Romney method of campaigning.

More
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/fiorina-doubles-down-planned-parenthood-falsehood?cid=eml_mra_20150918



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