They did buld that? Really?

From Bill Keller at the NY Times, “We did build that,” has already been established as one of the more dishonest political memes in a campaign season undisturbed by shame. The fact that this slogan has been thoroughly debunked has not kept it from being the defining theme in Tampa.” Mr. Keller is probably right at some level but I think he misses the larger point.  The Republicans “did build that.”  The “that” they’ve built is a major political campaign founded on lies and distortions.  The first and most important distortion of which is their candidate for the presidency.

The very fact that they can go to a convention and make a fuss about Mr. Romney, when for the first year of this insufferable campaign season, they tried every non-Romney candidate they had, belies their real emotions.  But as we know, American’s memories are short and their attention spans are practically non-existent. So why stop with distortions? Why not go whole hog and just make stuff up?

How about Obama constantly voted “present” when in the US Senate.  First of all, that  vote is not allowed in the US Senate where he voted on 95% of the 645 votes that came up while he was there.  This distortion is based on his time in the Illinois Senate where he cast a ‘present’ vote 139 times out of the more than 4,000 votes he cast during his term in that body.

Let’s see there’s the biggest spender lie.  He has been the smallest spender since Eisenhower.  Annualized growth in government spending under Mr. Obama has been 1.4 percent.  Much less than Reagan at 8.7 and Bush II at 8.1.

What about the stimulus you say?  What about it?  It has been virtually paid back and is responsible for avoiding a full scale depression brought on by previous administrative decisions like deregulation of the banking industry.  And let’s not forget that it literally saved the American auto-industry and the state of Michigan – Mr. Romney’s home state – where he’s “never been asked to show his birth certificate.”

Continuing the lies, the Romney campaign pushes the outright fabrication that Mr. Obama is removing the work requirements from the welfare system.  This is not even a distortion, but an outright lie.  And the Republicans know it but have publically admitted that it works so they will continue to use it.

Back to the “you didn’t build that” distortion.  Why does is have so much power?  Because half of the population loves to hear it.  Here’s Mr. Obama’s speech, verbatim:   

“Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”  (If you’re having a hard time understanding his speech it might be because we don’t hear much honesty anymore.)

Speaking of the Internet, it was built by government research funded by us.  Because of the it, U.S. e-commerce sales totaled $194.3 billion in 2011, up 16.1% from $167.3 billion in 2010, according to an estimate released today by the U.S. Commerce Department.  Entrepreneurs, did you really build the businesses that produced this economic boom alone?    

Robert DeFilippis