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'A campaign of almost pathological dishonesty'

Paul Krugman
'A campaign of almost pathological dishonesty'
'A campaign of almost pathological dishonesty'

Paul Krugman so ridiculous, even Romney couldn't actually mean that.

8. Also on contraception access, Romney said, "[The Obama administration is] requiring the Catholic Church to provide for its employees and its various enterprises health care insurance that would include birth control, sterilization and the morning-after pill. Unbelievable."

Yes, it's literally unbelievable, because he's lying: churches are exempt. (He's also contradicting his own previous position.)

9. On the Affordable Care Act, Romney said, "I will repeal Obamacare for a lot of reasons. One, I don't want to spend another trillion dollars... Number two, I don't believe the federal government should cut Medicare by some $500 billion."

One, the ACA saves money and reduces the deficit. Number two, the Medicare claim continues to be wildly misleading.

10. On Pentagon spending, Romney claimed, "This is a president who is ... cutting our military budget by roughly a trillion dollars."

That's not even close to being true.

11. On international affairs, Romney argued about the president, "He decided to give Russia their number one foreign policy objective -- removal of our missile defense sites from Eastern Europe -- and got nothing in return."

That's just not what happened.

12. Romney's new attack ad says Rick Santorum voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Santorum left the Senate in 2006 -- three years before Sotomayor's confirmation. [Update: It looks like the Romney camp played fast and loose on this one, showing Sotomayor with President Obama in 2009 when she was nominated for the Supreme Court, but counting Santorum's vote when Sotomayor was a lower-court nominee. The implication for viewers is that Santorum backed Sotomayor for the high court, which is not true, when he and other Republicans did support her confirmation to a lower court.]

Foreign Policy columnist Michael Cohen noted yesterday that he understands that "politicians mislead and occasionally fib," but added, "[H]onestly, I've never seen anyone do it as brazenly as Mitt Romney."

With each passing week, I find it harder to disagree with such a sentiment.