ROMNEY THE LIAR'S CONVENTION: AN ORGY OF OUTRIGHT ***LIES***

For my own health, I refuse to watch a single second of the Republican convention. But two intrepid men did so on by behalf. First off, the fearless Andrew Sullivan live-blogging the whole train wreck right here. Highlights:  

9.31 pm. Santorum speaks as if Obama needs to be taught what it is to be an American. The whole night so far has been reiterating every bald-faced out-of-context lie about the president.

9.33 pm. A reader writes: Tonight's theme at the RNC is We Built That. The Republicans should also post that under the national debt counter they have above the podium. Another: One of the RNC's "We Built That" profiles of American small-business owners includes a short spot with Sam Sakata, owner of Sakata Farms. Sakata is a plain-spoken, laconic guy who expresses disappointment with Obama but little vitriol. But one sentiment he never expresses? A sense of gratitude or humility for the $79,430 worth of Federal subsidies he received during the first five years of his business. 

9.34 pm. Santorum is saying that Obama has "waived the work requirement for welfare". This is a lie - spoken by the runner-up for the nomination. It is a lie. The waivers have been routine for state experimentation. Many were sought by Republican governors. They were designed to ensure more efficient ways to get work as part of the welfare requirement. Santorum is a devout Catholic. So why is he lying out loud on national television? And why is he stirring up racial division by lying? If you ever thought the guy had some integrity, you now know he doesn't.

9.38 pm. The fact-checking of Boehner's speech is brutal as well. This is a convention based on lies, it appears. Kessler: House Speaker John Boehner’s speech starts out with just about every out-of-context quote used by Republicans to bash President Obama. Two of his examples were featured in our Gaffe-check videos: “The private sector is doing fine” and “If you’ve got a business, “you didn’t build that.” Such gaffes are effective when they reinforce an existing stereotype—in this case, the notion that Obama is hostile to private enterprise. But as our videos show, both of these quotes were taken out of context. This seems a natural next step for a fundamentalist party, inventing its own reality, insisting on its own truths, and simply refusing to acknowledge reality. There is a case to be made against Obama; but what we have been hearing so far is an attack on a president who exists entirely in the imagination of the GOP base. 

9.40 pm. Santorum was movingly genuine in his pro-life fanaticism. But he also critically played up the welfare lie. 

10.02 pm. Another lie about welfare reform - adding that Obama "gutted" it secretly in the middle of the night. And another obvious lie: Not a single Republican idea in Obamacare? How about the individual mandate? Healthcare exchanges? But here's what's staggering about this dude: he has turned his own lie into an accusation that Obama - and every fact-checker in the business - into an alleged lie by Obama! This is what a cold civil war looks like: making shit up entirely to create an illusion of reality. No engagement; no real argument; no actual debate. Just fantasy. 

10.05 pm. Nikki Haley repeats the lie about how Obama said that small business owners "didn't build their businesses". The lie is now a premise for further lies. So Obama is actually chasing industry overseas. 

10.12 pm. I can't say I found Haley that galvanizing - or her rhetoric persuasive. Seriously, Obama is also "destabilizing" the military? What part of the fictitious kitchen sink has been left behind. 

10.49  pm. Chris Christie is attacking politicians who attack!  

10.50 pm. After a night of categorical lies, Christie tells us to face the truth. 

10.55 pm. Key sentence: Their plan: whistle a happy tune while driving us off the fiscal cliff, as long as they are behind the wheel of power while we fall. Why would anyone in politics want to do that? Christie is describing is not found in reality. Maybe Obama is misguided - but does he really want to wreck the country? Who believes that but Limbaugh fans? 

10.56 pm. Another key sentence: We believe it's possible to forge bipartisan compromise and stand up for conservative principles. Which translates into no new tax revenues; increased defense spending; and Medicare cuts in the distant future. Where is the compromise in the GOP platform? The meaning of that sentence seems to me to say rather simply that "We believe it's possible to force Democrats to adopt every single GOP idea and refuse to offer them anything in return and that's bipartisanship." 

10.56 pm. Another key sentence: We believe it's possible to forge bipartisan compromise and stand up for conservative principles. Which translates into no new tax revenues; increased defense spending; and Medicare cuts in the distant future. Where is the compromise in the GOP platform? The meaning of that sentence seems to me to say rather simply that "We believe it's possible to force Democrats to adopt every single GOP idea and refuse to offer them anything in return and that's bipartisanship." 



10.58 pm. I feel as if I am behind the looking glass. Another statement [by Christie]: "Tonight, our duty is to tell the American people the truth. Our problems are big and the solutions will not be painless. We all must share in the sacrifice. Any leader that tells us differently is simply not telling the truth."  So Christie is presumably for Obama. On the debt, the Republicans believe that some should be spared pain and not have to "share in the sacrifice": the very wealthy and the Pentagon. Only the poor and the old and the sick have to make sacrifices. The wealthy and the defense contractors can sleep soundly. No sacrifice for them. Obama, on the other hand, favors cuts in Medicare (and has enforced them), cuts in defense, and increases in tax revenues from the very wealthy. Only Obama wants to share the sacrifice. 

Well, you get the idea. The Republicans told the "You didn't build that" lie and the "gutting welfare" lie over and over and over. I'm glad I missed it. And the comment by the redoubtable Pierce on all this is not to be missed:

It was an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie. It was an entire evening based on demonstrable lies told in service to the overriding demonstrable lie. And there was only one real story for actual journalists to tell at the end of it.

The Republicans simply don't care.

They don't care that they lie. They don't care that their lies are obvious. They don't care that their lies wouldn't fool an underpaid substitute Social Studies teacher in a public middle school, who would then probably go out one night and get yelled at by Chris Christie. ("They believe in teacher's unions. We believe in teachers," he said in his speech. Yeah, you just don't believe in paying them.)

They don't care that they lie so obviously that they always get caught, like they did with the evening's entire theme, like they have in and around the Tampa Bay Times Forum, or with the story of poor Jack Gilchrist. The Republicans will just tell the lie again. And again. And once more, until people get tired of telling the truth in response.

It was an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie because it was an entire evening based on rejecting — publicly and dishonestly, and without caring that the facts of your own biographies give the lie to the words you're saying — the idea of a general political commonwealth as expressed through the national government, which has been the great engine behind the expansion of the country's size, the country's wealth, and, yes, the country's freedom...

It was an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie, and it was topped off by a demonstrable liar named Chris Christie, who talked about how the president can't lead, and that nobody wants to tell the Americans the truth of the sacrifices we have to share, and talked about "politicians who pander" at a convention that is preparing to nominate Willard Romney, which was the final hilarious lie of the night, since Romney hasn't stopped pandering since he walked down the steps of the Massachusetts State House in 2006.

You know, after hearing about this lying Republican clap-trap, I have only one wish:

That next week the Democrats bring out the knives to use on Willard. 

The big, long, sharp, nasty ones.