Lying v. Mendacity

The Republican convention is over and the Democratic convention is happening this week. And the talk has turned to lying. Paul Ryan's speech last week at the RNC was just loaded up with lies. And there is no way he did not know it. He accused the president of being the cause for a plant shut down when the plant closed BEFORE the president took office (during GWB's tenure). And now he is trying to claim that (President) Obama makes (President) Carter looks like the ‘good old days.’ And doing it by lying. And that, my friends, is the difference between lying and mendacity. The lies are part of the campaign strategy and the facts be damned. Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster said, and I quote: "Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” Or facts, evidently. We all know politicians lie. We don't like it, but it probably is not going to change. But the Republicans have turned lying into an art form. They boldly lie and do not care whether they are called out for the lies or not. Because they know that their base does not care whether it is the truth or not. They just want it to feel good. The error I think they are making is that moderate, undecided voters do care. I think much of it probably stems from Romney's who-cares-what-I-have-to-say attitude... he'll say anything at all to get elected. Anything. Mitt Romney has basically changed his position on every issue since he was governor of Massachusetts. Is he even the same person? Watch the campaign ad put together by John McCain in the 2008 election for Romney changing positions in his own words! The scary thing is, that at least as of today (9/5/2012), most polls show the election being close. There must still be a lot of rampant stupidity, jingoism, and racism in this country for that to be the case.