Romney, Pinocchio, ET AL.

By Fred Mittag

 

pinocchio1We should not casually stereotype any group. But inductive reasoning leads to the conclusion that conservatives are liars. The media reject that word, but “liar” is in the dictionary and its sturdy meaning is appropriate.

There are the aggressive liars who are the leaders and the passive liars who are the followers. This arrangement allows for the maintenance of discipline. Republican votes in Congress are often 100%, mostly against President Obama, even at the expense of the working class and the economy.

You will never hear a conservative express an original thought. Instead, their ideology determines the agenda and then their strategist, Frank Luntz, goes to work to provide the vocabulary, labeling health-care reform as a “government takeover,” the estate tax as a “death tax,” etc. Luntz develops a set of “talking points” that every conservative memorizes and repeats, like a mantra. This mantra will be repeated at every press conference and propagated on Fox News. And then the followers repeat the talking points, too, with the same level of understanding as parrots.

A recent creation of Luntz is the “war on religion.” With this framing, the requirement for the employer to include contraception under insurance plans for employees, such as in Catholic hospitals, is an “attack on religious freedom.”

One would think that a nurse at a hospital should be a nurse, not a convert to Church dogma. One would think that President Obama’s compromise to require insurers to provide contraception, and exempt objecting employers, was brilliant in its simplicity. But, no.

The Blunt-Rubio amendment would have allowed any employer to refuse coverage for employees on anything to which the employer has a moral or religious objection. Imagine having a Christian Scientist as your boss who doesn’t believe in any medical treatment at all! And Mitt Romney, after he said he was against the Blunt-Rubio amendment, said assertively, “Of course I’m in favor of it.” Romney and Pinocchio are congenital liars, one with money, the other with a nose. Thankfully, it failed in the Senate, but Speaker John Boehner has vowed to continue the fight against contraception.

The media, instead of saying liar, often use the word “spin.” One of the most galling examples of “spin” was when Republican Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia justified his support for a bill designed to humiliate women wanting an abortion by first requiring a trans-vaginal probe. He said, “Every invasive procedure has an informed consent requirement.” In other words, a woman is free to refuse the state’s humiliation and she can carry her pregnancy to term.

Since there’s no medical reason for the trans-vaginal probe for the purpose of abortion, it would make as much sense to require a doctor to extract a sample of semen from a man before he can be treated for prostate cancer by radiation. The sample of semen would have as much medical use as the vaginal probe, or, as many call it, “rape by the state.”

Another big lie that became a “talking point” is that the trans-vaginal probe will help to “inform” the woman who is seeking an abortion. Inform her of what, exactly? She already knows she’s pregnant. What conservatives call a “war on religion,” others are calling a “war on women.”

Lying is the triumph of conservative ideology over reason and ethics. Yes, that’s right. Arizona and Kansas, both red states, are trying to pass legislation that is called “Let Doctors Lie.” The idea is that if a doctor doesn’t believe in abortion because of his religious convictions, he is free to lie, even when he knows his patient will give birth to a baby with a devastating condition. The doctor can say everything is fine, and then when the parents receive their tragic surprise, they have no legal right to sue the doctor for lying to them.

Republican liars frighten us with sinister, “liberal” “government takeovers” and “government intrusions,” but when conservatives control a state government, they intrude into vaginas and take over women’s clinics. Ideology is the capacity to maintain one’s belief in spite of facts to the contrary. Religion is the capacity to believe something without the benefit of any facts at all. Conservatives are a calamitous hybrid of ideology and religion; hence, their disregard for truth. America deserves better.

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