In a bold move, Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s campaign has released its very first political ad of the 2012 Presidential race and it is a lie. Regardless of what party you support, there is no denying the deception in this message.
The ad in question, which was being shown in New Hampshire last week, used a partial quote of then Senator Barack Obama from an October 2008 speech. The ad uses this portion of the quote, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose,” we can hear now President Obama say. When in fact, after digging, with very little difficultly you can find that the actual full context of the quote was, “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”
We have seen ads from parties on both sides which have skewed the truth or taken quotes out of context to serve their message. But never has an ad gone so far to flat out lie to the public. This ad is a blatant deception of the truth to the public. Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent, this evolution of political advertising should stop here.
Candidate Romney has defended this ad saying “There was no hidden effort on the part of our campaign. It was instead to point out that what’s sauce for the goose is now sauce for the gander.” At least he was honest. There was obviously no hidden effort at deception as it took almost no time at all to look up the true context of the quote. Unfortunately it is not as simple to discover who in the campaign was responsible for the message in this ad.
The person responsible for this message should be held accountable. While there are many who will call this article a leftist strategy, I only ask you to watch the ad and then look up the quote for yourself and make you own determination.
For too many years, these “swift-boating” tactics have been gaining in popularity while trying to find the true message of any campaign has been more difficult to find due to constant back and forth jabs at each other.
