Republicans and The Big Lie

California Democratic Chairman John Burton was recently excoriated for daring to compare the Republican campaign tactics to The Big Lie propaganda technique most famously employed by Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany.

“They lie and they don’t care if people think they lie… Joseph Goebbels – it’s the big lie, you keep repeating it,” Burton said Monday before the Blake Hotel breakfast. He said Ryan told “a bold-faced lie and he doesn’t care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie.”

Well guess what? Burton was right. That is exactly what the Republicans are doing. Let's look at the definition of The Big Lie by the guy who created it.

"All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." — Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1]

The Romney/Ryan Campaign is built entirely on lies. And they don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut who knows it.

Romney campaign has lied about simple things: the welfare waivers, the raiding of Medicare, that he would balance the budget in ten years, that they released two years of tax returns, the now infamous GM Janesville plant, the assertion that Obama never passed a trade bill while in office, Romney's weird story about this departure from Bain; while also repeating things which the campaign had to know were not true -- the economy is worse today than when Obama took office, the Arab Spring has become an Arab Winter, the whole "he didn't build it" embarrassment. And, of course, there is the hiding the ball on his taxes, the offshore accounts, the high likelihood of massive tax evasion and the repeated mistakes/errors/lies on his public filings.

When confronted with the campaigns lies, Romney pollster Neil Newhouse turned the challenge back on the fact checkers, saying

“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,”

Newhouse said. Unfuckingbelievable. They're lying, they know they're lying, and they are sticking by their lies. And Republicans are so stupid they don't even care.