Mitt Romney's Camp Releases Dishonest Ad Misquoting the US President (VIDEO)
Will the advertisement alienate Christian voters from the Republican presidential candidate?
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released a commercial last night attacking a comment of President Obama’s, but there’s one problem: Obama was quoting an excerpt in John McCain’s 2008 campaign.
The dishonest advertisement was released yesterday evening by the Romney campaign, and in it, the former Massachusetts governor criticizes Obama’s economic policy by playing a clip of the president saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”
This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts, because the Obama 2008 campaign extracted that particular quote from a larger excerpt of a John McCain strategist. The unnamed strategist was quoted by the New York Daily News Oct. 6, 2008 as saying, “It's a dangerous road, but we (the John McCain campaign) have no choice… If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."
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Obama and his first presidential campaign tried their best to capitalize on the quip by using it to highlight John McCain’s less-than-stellar record concerning fiscal policy. Although the economy was a major concern of the country during that election, the McCain camp understood that discussing it too much would leave the Vietnam veteran open to political attack.
Now, in 2011, Romney’s faction attempted to use the same strategy, but failed to realize-or perhaps, realized and did so anyways-that Obama was lambasting McCain with the quote, not describing his own economic policy.
Though Obama’s financial legislations have not been as successful as he had hoped, Romney’s eagerness to point out his opponent’s faults have been deceitful.
Besides the falsely run quote, Romney’s commercial mentions the “record foreclosures” that took place so far under the Obama administration. While this assertion is potentially true, the Mormon politician’s official policy on the housing crisis is “don’t try and stop the foreclosure process,” which he said in an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal.
Romney’s business acumen gained from his various business deals could be correct. However, pointing out Obama for doing something similar may not be untruthful, but it may be considered hypocritical, especially by Christian conservatives.
As for the Obama/McCain strategist quote, the Romney campaign responded to questions this morning, stating that they used the quote “intentionally,” according to Politico.
Watch the controversial advertisement below.
