"Mitt Romney’s misleading attack ad" Posted by Ezra Klein at WP

[applegrove]

Mitt Romney’s misleading attack ad

Posted by Ezra Klein at WP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/19/mitt-romneys-misleading-attack-ad/

"SNIP...................................

If you listen to Romney’s ad, you hear the president say this:


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 ’cause 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: If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Here’s what Obama actually said, with the omitted sentences in bold:

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 ‘cause 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.

.....................................SNIP"

[pnwmom]

1. It bothers me that Klein and others are calling this a "gaffe" on Obama's part.

It's not a gaffe to speak in coherent paragraphs that someone else slices and dices for an attack ad.

It's Romney who should bear all the criticism for this, not Obama.

[nxylas]

10. In retrospect, I think there was some poor choice of words there

I know hindsight is always 20/20, but Obama and his campaign staff must know that in an election year, anything you say can be used against you. If he had said his bit about roads and bridges and then said "If you have a business, you didn't build those roads and bridges", it would have been much more difficult to quote him out of context. "You didn't build that" makes it easy for his opponent to make it sound like he was talking about the business. Of course Romney bears the brunt of the blame for choosing to distort his words in that way, but hey, it's an election season, what do you expect? Obama (and his speechwriters, if he didn't write the speech himself) are not beyond criticism in this. Hopefully they will make more effort to make his speeches watertight from now on.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Good bye, Ncpinetree.

ETA:

Ncpinetree (1 post)
2. Are You Serious?!?!?

Umm.... how is this misleading? Comrade obama was the one who said that you didn't build it someone else did. He is a terrorist and needs to be dealt with in the appropriate manor

[RedStateLiberal]

5. My, that one was hard to spot...

[Pendrench]

4. "Manor"?

Really? We're supposed to take you serious??

Tim

[rocktivity]

7. Perhaps a larger font size would help with your lack of reading comprehension

Last edited Sat Jul 21, 2012, 02:02 AM - Edit history (4)

[font size="5"]If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own...I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be ‘cause 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. [/font]

You're welcome.


rocktivity

[Kalidurga]

6. LOL the trolls aren't even trying to be clever.

I wouldn't call someone slicing something you said out of a sound bite a gaffe. Seriously this is not even misleading. The way it is presented is an actual lie. So, lets just call it what it is. If you twist people's words to say something they didn't you are lying about them. We could however take Romney's words and use them against him. We could take Governor Romney and run him against Presidential Candidate Romney. The RWers wouldn't like his positions as Governor. And the Moderates wouldn't like that Romney has gone full bagger now.

[freshwest]

8. Mitt is the personifiation of Faux reporting, editing Obama's words. Birds of a feather...

But then, he is a vulture, isn't he...

[DCKit]

9. You can't stop it Ezra, and you probably can't fix it now.

It's out there.

We've got to repair it one person at a time.

They got us good.