Pope Pius Baloney XIII

Newt and other Republicans, frustrated with Romney's impenetrably slick Teflon® exterior, have called him a liar before, but this weekend [see video above] Newt let loose on the GOP front-runner and aloof, condescending Mormon bishop at an official Republican Party debate on national TV. Previously, Newt was just looked at as a misfit grousing because Romney was getting the best of him.

“He’s not telling the American people the truth. It’s just like his pretense that he’s a conservative,” Mr. Gingrich said on CBS’s The Early Show. “I just think he ought to be honest to the American people and try to win as the real Mitt Romney, not try to invent a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points.”

The volume of Mr Gingrich’s complaining has gotten louder and louder each day.

At a stop in Marshalltown, Iowa, on Monday, Mr. Gingrich complained that he has been “Romney-boated,” a reference to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads that helped derail Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.

Appearing on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight on Monday, Mr. Gingrich repeated his complaints about Mr. Romney’s refusal to disown the negative ads being run by a “super PAC” supporting his campaign.

“If he would be willing to just be man enough to say, ‘You know, this is my negative campaign and I admit it,’ I’d be a lot happier,” Mr. Gingrich said. “What I find very frustrating, and frankly irritating,” he said, is someone who “wants to run for president of the United States who can’t be honest with the American people.”

...“Here is my simple tag line: Somebody who will lie to you to get to be president will lie to you when they are president."

Not exactly the most trustworthy of organizations when it comes to calling out Republicans on their lies, even FactCheck.org was stunned by the stream of bullshit flowing off the ABC stage Saturday night and the NBC stage Sunday morning. "Less than 12 hours after the ABC News/Yahoo! debate in Manchester ended, the Republican presidential candidates were at it again-- debating on NBC’s Meet the Press. As they did the night before, the candidates at times distorted the truth on a variety of topics, including Medicare, job creation, gasoline prices and environmental regulations."

And of course it isn't only Romney who lies virtually every time he opens his mouth. ABC News fact-checked its own debate with this pack of liars, and the report was... well, just what one should expect from a gaggle of Republican stooges. From the Romney Big Lie about creating jobs at Bain instead of killing them to Santorum's eye-popping ethics violations and Perry's inchoate, barely decipherable nonsense, not one of these guys, other than perhaps Ron Paul, allows truth to get in the way of what how he wants to present his talking points.

The Romney lies about being a job creator, instead of the more accurate description as a jobs cremator, have a special place in my heart, since Bain used the Romney model to destroy my old company, Warner Bros Records. Matt Negrin reports for ABC that he continued to advance false claims on Saturday night.

Newt Gingrich raced out of the gate in tonight’s debate by being skeptical of Mitt Romney’s claim that Bain was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs, and he pointed to scrutiny of the firm in a recent New York Times article and a documentary.

In response, Romney repeated a familiar talking point-- that Bain, under his leadership, was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs at companies in which it invested. Romney was asked tonight if the 100,000 jobs are discounting the number of jobs that were lost at companies backed by Bain. He said the figure includes “both” and that it’s a “net” tally. He rattled off some talking points on companies that added jobs, like Sports Authority and Staples.

Bain was not the sole investor in Staples (which Romney said added 90,000 jobs) nor Sports Authority (which he said added 15,000). In 2002, for example, Staples founder Tom Stemberg wrote on CNN Money that Bain “gave us a boost.” Though the company also had help from two other firms. Sports Authority, too, was started with financial help from a few other investors.

Democrats were quick to respond to Romney’s claim tonight. In an email to reporters, the party pointed to a number of quotes the candidate has made years ago about that figure-- including this part from a 1994 Boston Globe article: ”In a telephone interview late yesterday, Romney dismissed the characterization of Staples and his other investments as streamlining, saying that what he has done is ‘build and grow businesses,’ not shrink them. He asserted that there is no way to calculate whether jobs have been lost or gained economy-wide as a result of his ventures, and noted his 10,000-job figure simply measures what happened to employment at companies in which Bain invested.”

FactCheck.org checked Romney’s 100,000 jobs claim earlier this week and found it to be “unproven and questionable.”

Rick Santorum, standing to Romney’s left on the stage, was asked early in the debate whether his comment that the United States doesn’t need a CEO (it needs a leader) was directed at Romney; he confirmed that, yes, it was.

And speaking of Santorum, the dust-up over his character as one of Washington's sleaziest operators was interesting. His behavior as a bribe-taker in office and a corrupt lobbyist as soon as he was defeated by Pennsylvania voters is pretty standard fare among Republicans, and it can be expected that he would be pounded a lot more heavily if he were debating a Democrat. But he still managed to lie his ass off and come out looking as bad as Romney.

During the debate, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum sparred over Santorum’s ethics record. Who characterized it more accurately?

Moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Ron Paul about this ad, which the Texas congressman’s campaign will begin airing in South Carolina on Monday:



The ad accuses Santorum of corruption and states that he took the most money from lobbyists of any member of Congress, during his time in Washington.

Paul stood by the ad tonight, noting that the “corruption” allegation originally came from an independent group. Santorum protested that the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), had leveled “ridiculous” charges against him and that CREW disproportionately makes such charges against conservatives.

Both are (mostly) right.

On the topic of lobbyist cash: Santorum did receive the most contributions from lobbyists and lobbying groups in the 2006 election cycle, when he lost to Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Santorum’s objection-- that the total was based on PAC donations-- is partly true. Center for Responsive Politics counts both PAC and individual (over $200) donations, according to its listed methodology.

On the topic of corruption, CREW did file a complaint against Santorum, and it did list Santorum on its “most corrupt” members of Congress list in 2006. But the complaint was never taken up by the Senate Ethics Committee and Santorum lost his reelection campaign, as noted in this ABC News story. CREW’s complaint alleged that a loan violated the Senate gift rule and that Santorum appeared to have traded legislative action for donations. Santorum did write a letter to Pennsylvania newspaper protesting the allegations.

As for CREW’s partisanship: Santorum is probably right about CREW’s reputation among Republicans, but the group focuses its criticism on both parties. Its current “most corrupt” list includes 10 Republicans and four Democrats.

When Santorum made the list, in an election cycle marked by GOP ethics scandals, the list included 21 Republicans and four Democrats.

One more great big Romney lie everyone noticed early in the debate: his claim that no states want to ban contraceptives. Technically, no state does, but hundreds of Republican Party officials do all over the states-- including, oddly enough, Romney himself!

Romney backed Mississippi’s ultimately failed (it was voted down in a referendum) Personhood Amendment, which if passed would have defined life as having begun at the point of conception.

Such language “could potentially ban common forms of contraception like the birth control pill, as well as prevent a pregnant woman experiencing complications that threaten her life or health to obtain safe abortion care,” Molly A.K. Connors wrote in New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor.

In 2005, Romney, then the governor of Massachusetts, vetoed a bill meant to expand emergency access to the “morning after pill.” The law would have required hospitals to offer the pill to rape survivors and allowed for certain state-sanctioned pharmacists to sell it without asking for a prescription.

“The bill does not involve only the prevention of conception: The drug it authorizes would also terminate life after conception,” Romney wrote, defending the veto in this op-ed piece.

For his part, Santorum has often spoken out against the Supreme Court’s ruling in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965). That decision, which stated that the constitution protected “the right to privacy,” was inspired by an ultimately overturned state ban on contraception.

Santorum and many anti-Abortionists feel that the ruling paved the way for Roe v. Wade.

The Griswold case, he said yesterday, “created a new Constitutional right, which in my opinion is judicial activism.”

So while it would be unfair to say Santorum wants to ban contraception, he has been and remains a vocal opponent of the most prominent court ruling in its favor.

Meanwhile right-wing bloggers are on suicide watch over the incompetence of their preferred lunatic fringe candidates to take on the craven Willard and today's tweets from rightist Dan Riehl portend a seriously disillusioned base.