Fact Check: Mitt Romney’s Speech
We at the respected FactCheck.org have decided to fact check Mitt Romney’s speech, to note in an objective and dispassionate manner what a liar Mitt Romney is. We will do this in the traditional manner: not by noting actual factual mistakes, but by claiming the speech was misleading because Romney did not make the same arguments that Democrats make against him.
First, Romney tried to portray himself as a decent family man. Left unmentioned was the fact that he put the family dog on the roof of his car.
Romney tried to claim his time at Bain Capital as an example of success, citing numerous companies that succeeded. The audience would have no way of knowing that some other companies failed.
And Romney attempted to paint a picture of Mormonism as just another religion, when everybody knows it is a scam involving a guy and a bunch of plates and they don’t even drink alcohol or even coffee and how crazy is that?
Finally, Romney praised Paul Ryan’s speech, when we here at FactCheck.org revealed that Ryan got his facts wrong. Of course, Ed Morrissey says we got our facts wrong, but who are you going to believe? A partisan hack blogger or a respected fact checking organization?
[Editor’s note: to those who say this post is not funny, I will note that David Brooks is published in the New York Times. Thank you.]
This may be the lamest post ever, but when you are imitating the lamest organization ever, that is the risk you run.
Patterico (83033d) — 8/31/2012 @ 7:54 amBut its certainly New York Times quality lame. Congrats.
SPQR (26be8b) — 8/31/2012 @ 7:57 amDennis Praeger said something last night which I found profound — that once a side is no longer committed to the truth and facts there is no sense in debate.
Rodney King's Spirit (aeda60) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:08 amIt took Patterico a lot of effort to write that lamely. Brooks does it without even breaking a sweat.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (a18ddc) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:10 amRemember when “they” said journolist had been disbanded and was dead? Yeah. Me too.
elissa (ed98f9) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:19 amShouldn’t FACT CHECK be in all caps for maximum effectiveness, like on teh twitters?
Jay in Ames (926e6b) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:19 amStill funnier than David Brooks, and that’s saying something.
You know, literally, something.
Maybe not literally saying something, but literally typing something. I meant literally figuratively.
egd (d580cc) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:19 amBest Editor’s Note in a long time.
ukuleledave (c59551) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:46 amI read the NYT specifically because I’m allergic to facts.
AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:48 amCareful Patterico. You might be some left wing fans who don’t realize this is parody. Soon you’ll be invaded by the loonies from LGF.
BTW, I like it. Moar (sic) please.
NJRob (fe68e7) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:49 amIt really was poor form of Romney not to let the White House write his speech for him when you think about it. Racist as well.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:50 amIt made me snort, and I needed cheering up, so I’m not going to be critical.
Dianna (b7aa4f) — 8/31/2012 @ 9:05 amMy local newspaper printed this New York Times article that declared that Ryan’s speech full of lies. The article wasn’t even labeled “analysis.” And all of its points alleging that Ryan lied were mere opinions, not facts. In other words, Ryan lied because he didn’t include additional information that the so-called fact-checker deemed relevent — not because any of his facts were incorrect. (They WERE correct.)
aunursa (7014a8) — 8/31/2012 @ 9:09 amOops! Actually it was THIS New York Times hit piece on Ryan’s speech that my local paper reprinted.
aunursa (7014a8) — 8/31/2012 @ 9:11 amOkay, now do Glenn Kessler.
Chipperoo (fe8b5a) — 8/31/2012 @ 9:37 amRomney tried to claim his time at Bain Capital as an example of success, citing numerous companies that succeeded. The audience would have no way of knowing that some other companies failed.
No, he said that. He even made a point of it:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/transcript-mitt-romney-speech-at-rnc/
Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving. It’s about dreams. Usually it doesn’t work out exactly as you might have imagined.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 8/31/2012 @ 10:01 amBut then Romney added:
Steve Jobs was fired at Apple, and then he came back and changed the world.
Now here I have a problem with what Mitt Romney said.
It was almost a fluke that Steve Jobs came back!
Did he tell the story of how that happened?
There’s a book: “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs” that tells it – written when he was alive. ($14.99 on the Kindle at Amazon.com, $19.00 paperback from amazon, $8.98 new on amazon but not from amazon, $1.50 used. In other words $4.00)
And does Romney mean by that the Apple Computer doesn’t count, that the microcomputer didn’t change the world?
Just because Apple later lost out to IBM and Microsoft doesn’t mean that he didn’t change the world in the 1976-1980 period!!
(although it took some time for the effects to permeate)
I know the iBook and the iPod and the iPad are supposed to have a lso changed the world. It would be more accurate to say thouigh, they are starting to chanmge the world.
He’s pandering to the youth vote, which doesn’t remember the earlier change. He wants them to feel so superior abouyt their music choices.
And he talked like everybody voted for Obama!!
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 8/31/2012 @ 10:06 amI should have quoted these two linbes from the speech:
Now we weren’t always successful at Bain, but no one ever is in the real world of business. That’s what this president
does not seem to understand.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/transcript-mitt-romney-speech-at-rnc/#ixzz2591HpvmU
Now you wouild expect a follow-up after that about Solyndra, or government investment, but there wasn’t any.
he also said:
So we started a new business called Bain Capital. The only problem was, while WE believed in ourselves, nobody else did. We were young and had never done this before and we almost didn’t get off the ground. In those days, sometimes I wondered if I had made a really big mistake. I had thought about asking my church’s pension fund to invest, but I didn’t. I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors’ money, but I didn’t want to go to hell too. Shows what I know. Another of my partners got the Episcopal Church pension fund to invest. Today there are a lot of happy retired priests who should thank him.
What I would have liked to know is:
Did he ever ask Bernard Madoff to invest?
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 8/31/2012 @ 10:10 am______________________________________________
The audience would have no way of knowing that some other companies failed.
I sure wish one of them was the New York Times.
That paper is now so far beyond the pale in its partisanship, that it really would be just desserts if the Sulzbergers and their corporation end up like Obama’s Solyndra.
Mark (88885c) — 8/31/2012 @ 10:11 amSF, the point is not that a precise history of Jobs’ relationship with Apple was needed, just that the ‘suits’ at Apple threw he and Woz out, and then the company faltered, and Jobs came back and put it back on its feet.
AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92) — 8/31/2012 @ 10:12 amThe details were not important, the point was that mistakes are made in business;
if you correct them, you succeed (Jobs coming back) – if you don’t, you fail (the list is endless, but GM is well on the way to demonstrating it).
This is a tough crowd. I found it amusing.
Mattsky (bdc827) — 8/31/2012 @ 11:40 amI was indifferent to it, at first. But after that petulant tweet from Teh Won, it appears as though he hit the target squarely.
JD (346b99) — 8/31/2012 @ 11:51 am11, Daley, Obama’s speechwriters are white.
PCD (1d8b6d) — 8/31/2012 @ 11:57 amAny bets that the headlines after Obama’s acceptance speech don’t mention “fact checking”?
kansas (7b4374) — 8/31/2012 @ 1:50 pm“Most lame…..”
No.
You are at your most lame when not trying.
Now, tell us how great Clint Eastwood is.
Larry Reilly (9c6e84) — 8/31/2012 @ 1:52 pmI switched between FOX NEWS and PBS convention coverage last night. The PBS panel featured Judy Woodruff, Gwen Ifill, Mark Shields, and David Brooks.
The gang of 4 were attempting to appear evenhanded with only a few snide comments mixed in with their softly delivered but always slightly disparaging commentary. But when the string of civilians came to the mic and give highly personal first-hand accounts of Mitt Romney’s many unpublicized acts of kindness and generosity.
David Brooks was so stunned by the news he hung his head and pronounced Romney’s campaign managers guilty of political malpractice for failing to use Mitt’s record of compassion earlier in the campaign. Shields announced he had written the same phrase in his notes.
ropelight (ebda65) — 8/31/2012 @ 2:15 pmThere will be so many Republicans under O’s skin, some will think it’s an Olympic Event.
And, every time he reacts, it will just demonstrate to voters that he isn’t mature enough to be in his present position.
Glenn was right when he predicted that being as good as Carter was a best-case scenario.
AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92) — 8/31/2012 @ 2:15 pmReilly is a JournoLista.
JD (346b99) — 8/31/2012 @ 2:19 pmSounds like the men in the white jackets really did come to take Jeffrey Diamond and DCSCA back to the state hospital.
Elephant Stone (65d289) — 8/31/2012 @ 2:21 pmAfter getting O’s tweet, they were probably comatose – it’s so much easier that way.
AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (b8ab92) — 8/31/2012 @ 2:25 pmit’s almost an even more badly misnamed organization than the Department of Justice
happyfeet (3c92a1) — 8/31/2012 @ 4:04 pmJorge Bonilla at the Green Room @ HotAir.com writes of the genius of Eastwood’s “Kaufmannesque” performance http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2012/08/31/the-genius-of-the-empty-chair/
Elephant Stone (65d289) — 8/31/2012 @ 4:35 pmwhich establishes the image of Obama occupying an empty chair—playing to the notion that he’s the golfer-in-chief, the campaigner-in-chief, the vacationer-in-chief, the President who doesn’t meet with his Jobs Commission but once a calendar year, et al.
I heard a lot of criticism of Eastwood’s address today (e.g., style), mixed in with much praise of the salient points he made. It was a Bob Newhart riff, stones, and it may not have resounded with teh Beltway Boys and certainly not with MSLSD and the leftwing m00nbats, but it did connect with the ones who count… the 100M+ who love Clint Eastwood and his movies. It was a gift from Clint to the American people and it was substance over style at worst.
The gag is off the American people… it is okay not only to laugh at the Blamer-in Chief, it’s also okay to can his narrow ass… whether you voted for him (I sure didn’t) or not.
Colonel Haiku (71375e) — 8/31/2012 @ 5:24 pmWomen are warming up with mittens after that speech.
mg (44de53) — 8/31/2012 @ 5:25 pmColonel,
I have some of Newhart’s old standup stuff from the ’60s on CD.
I love some of the routines where he pretends to be on the phone with someone, and he “repeats” to the audience what is ‘said’ to him, as Clint did with Obama.
I think you make an excellent point about how Clint was almost giving people a license to make light of Obama. That could open the floodgates. Up to this point, everyone among the media has been so hesitant to mock Obama, for fear of being perceived as politically incorrect. Both Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey have publicly expressed that sentiment.
Elephant Stone (65d289) — 8/31/2012 @ 5:45 pmWhat Chevy Chase did to Ford, what “there you go, again” did to Carter, what “it’s the economy, Stupid” did to Bush 41, and what Tina Fey did to Palin, all became repeated memes among pop culture.
Once a President or candidate is the “accepted” butt of mockery among the popular media, it really has hurt his (or her)standing among that squishy apolitical uninformed percentage of the population who tend to NOT pay much attention to substantive politics, yet who may still vote, and usually end up deciding close elections one way or t’other.
Yeah, I got the Newhart thing, too. Reminded me of “Driving Instructor”
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 8/31/2012 @ 6:06 pmAs in “Mr President, you campaigned in the center, you promised to compromise and reach across the aisle, so I pretty much didn’t expect that series of hard left turns.”
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 8/31/2012 @ 6:09 pmClint was funnier than Bill Mahar, Joy Behar, Will Farrell
Birdbath (716828) — 8/31/2012 @ 6:20 pmClint’s a better actor than Sean Penn, George Clooney, Tim Robbins
Clint’s a better director than Norman Lear, Brian DePalma, Michael Moore.
I’m glad he’s on our side.
What Chevy Chase did to Ford, what “there you go, again” did to Carter, what “it’s the economy, Stupid” did to Bush 41, and what Tina Fey did to Palin, all became repeated memes among pop culture.
Yes, indeed, stones. Re: Lovitz… he’s been subjected to some of the most perniciously vile epithets I’ve read in some time. I think it’s opened his eyes.
Colonel Haiku (71375e) — 8/31/2012 @ 8:38 pmColonel, Mark Steyn now just wrote at The Corner that he believes Clint was very deliberate in doing an unslick, unpolished Newhart or Dean Martin-ish skit.
Good call on your part.
I’m not joking, if the whole “empty chair” jokes begin to take off, it could really hurt Obama with the clueless, apolitical, uninformed segment of the electorate.
You just know that if the shoe were on the other foot, and a GOP candidate were the butt of an “empty chair” speech at the DNC, that it would immediately become a skit on SNL, Letterman, Stewart, et al, and they’d be talking about it at “Good Morning, America,” and any talk show that had an unoccupied chair would become fodder for mocking the GOP candidate, and maybe Rolling Stone magazine would scrap their next Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber cover photo for a photo of an empty chair behind a desk in the Oval Office.
It’s amazing the GOP can ever win the White House with the uphill climb against the media and pop culture.
Elephant Stone (65d289) — 8/31/2012 @ 9:00 pmObama won’t be mocked. The cool kids never are and if he’s mocked that means…………Obama won’t be mocked. Rinse, repeat.
The Sunday Morning Shows will be hilarious. ‘well known racist, Clint Eastwood said blacks are empty chairs, do you stand with Clint’ Republican in my cross-hairs? And this Alfred E. Neuman thing is racist. What with the acne and some blacks have acme. Mad Magazine has always been racist. Didn’t Clint make that anti-Asian immigrant movie a few years ago? Didn’t he shoot Mexicans, MEXICANS!!!!! in movies he shot in the 70s?
East German Judge (a5dac7) — 8/31/2012 @ 9:23 pmhttp://www.hulu.com/watch/19312
Colonel Haiku (71375e) — 8/31/2012 @ 9:35 pmTeh insolence and bold effrontery!
Colonel Haiku (71375e) — 8/31/2012 @ 9:37 pmBet you the Leno show has been calling Eastwood’s agent non-stop today.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 9/1/2012 @ 12:47 amThe two biggest beliefs among Dems and progs now:
gp (0c542c) — 9/1/2012 @ 5:26 am1) Everything Republicans say is shocking lies.
2) When BHO loses, it will only be because he is outspent.
They really, deeply believe this.
I do think Eastwood’s delivery could have been better, it was so scattered it was hard to tell what was parody and what wasn’t, until I watched it a few times. I get that Romney’s team might want to distance themselves from it a little directly, but don’t think it was ill done of the RNC to have invited him. It was a moment of unscripted comic relief in what might otherwise seem a bit overserious (to those not paying attention the last 3.5 years as to what’s really at stake).
But the empty chair was genius, and clearly a direct hit. And if anything has ever better indicated the tone-deafness and all-encompassing vain narcissism of our thin-skinned Confiscator in Chief, his “response” tweet of him in a big leather chair that just had to be marked “The President” and labeled ‘this seat’s taken’ (like the reader wouldn’t be able to get it otherwise, with his BACK TO THE CAMERA, refusing to face his critics, well, I just don’t know what that would be.
rtrski (e9b9a0) — 9/1/2012 @ 8:23 amThe goal of this blog is to ban everyone but extremists. Mission accomplished.
right head fred (97e281) — 9/1/2012 @ 3:49 pm46-it was friggin psycho. No fringe voters watched that train wreck and changed their minds.
right head fred (97e281) — 9/1/2012 @ 3:50 pmI assume you must be feeling really good about the president’s chances for re-election then, right head?
elissa (e27c37) — 9/1/2012 @ 4:06 pmElissa, isn’t it great that only right wing extremists post here?
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 9/1/2012 @ 4:19 pmHow many fact-checkers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
There is no light bulb! YOU LIED about the light bulb! Four Pinocchios and a Pants-on-Fire!
gwjd (032bef) — 9/1/2012 @ 6:35 pm“right head fred”, you seem to be lie head fred.
SPQR (26be8b) — 9/1/2012 @ 6:43 pmRight head Fred is the newest “tye”
JD (346b99) — 9/1/2012 @ 6:47 pmIf independent voters made their decision on the next election based on Eastwood’s very funny talk, that would not be a good thing. Eastwood was simply drawing attention to the lousy job the President is doing.
I would hope that independent voters make their decision on the sorry state of the economy, the lack of new ideas on the left and this.
Ag80 (b2c81f) — 9/1/2012 @ 7:08 pmR.I.P. Hal David, songwriting partner of Burt Bacharach
Icy (0d627c) — 9/2/2012 @ 7:38 amgive Fred head was just driving by.
Icy (0d627c) — 9/2/2012 @ 7:43 amAnd the band plays on;
http://theothermccain.com/2012/09/02/kimberlin-rauhauser-axis-targets-romney-campaign-staffer-bill-murphy/
narciso (ee31f1) — 9/2/2012 @ 7:55 amThe Pinocchio Press (Best of the Web Sept 4)
A lot about fact checkers and Republican statements.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 9/4/2012 @ 2:27 pm