"IS MITT ROMNEY A SERIAL LIAR?" AND THE CROWD SAYS "YES!!"

This excellent post by Leonard Steinhorn on Pundit Wire answers the question quite definitely. Excerpts:

What we don’t yet want to admit is a more discomfiting idea: that the man our country may elect as President seems to have no problem lying to us, that he is accumulating a record of lies and misrepresentations on the campaign trail that goes far beyond the exaggerated rhetoric characteristic of most candidates. Yes, politicians might fudge a statistic, mitigate a failure, embellish a story, or take a little extra credit for success, and because of that most pundits and journalists have folded Romney’s lies and misrepresentations into the big tent of exaggerated political rhetoric that reporters now take for granted even if they roll their eyes when hearing it. No big deal, we’re led to believe.

But Romney is different from the others. He seems to make claims that he knows are not true. This is a very smart man, a maven for details and a stickler for precision known for his data-driven business decisions, yet he looks us in the eyes and makes statements and claims that he knows to be misleading or false...


On January 25, less than a week before the Florida primary, Romney told a Univision audience that even though his father was born in Mexico, he was born to American citizens who were living in an American Mormon colony in Mexico at the time (originally created to escape U.S. laws against polygamy).


Therefore, he said, it would be “disingenuous on my part” to claim he was Mexican-American even though that might be popular with Latino voters. “I don’t think people would think I was being honest with them if I said I was Mexican-American.”


Then, at a nationally televised debate a few days later, a debate considered decisive for the Florida primary, Romney angrily responded to a Newt Gingrich accusation that he was anti-immigrant.


“I’m not anti-immigrant,” he snapped at Gingrich. “My father was born in Mexico. My wife’s father was born in Wales. They came to this country. The idea that I’m anti-immigrant is repulsive.”


Clearly he was implying that because his father was born in Mexico and he “came to this country,” that he himself has immigrant roots. Didn’t he just say a couple days before that it would be “disingenuous on my part” and not “honest” to make that claim? Isn’t that misleading if not lying?


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In 1994, during his Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy, Romney claimed that his company, Bain Capital, helped to create about 10,000 jobs. He qualified that, insisting that his firm didn’t create the jobs but simply helped in their creation.


“That’s why I’m always very careful to use the words ‘help create,’” he said at the time. “Bain Capital, or Mitt Romney, ‘helped create’ over 10,000 jobs. I don’t take credit for the jobs at Staples. I helped create the jobs at Staples.”


Now Romney trots out a much higher job creation number, which the Associated Press says is “unsupported.” But even if we trust his new math, look at how he phrases it: “We created over 100,000 jobs,” he said in one interview, and in a debate he claimed “we created something over 100,000 jobs.” Unlike what he said in 1994, he seems to be taking full credit for whatever jobs his company may have helped to create.


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Think what you wish about Newt Gingrich, but we should take his warning about Mitt Romney seriously: “Somebody who will lie to you to get to be president, will lie to you when they are president.”


As I have said repeatedly--you have been warned.