Defamation and Felony

While a felony can land you in court, slander and libel can get you in legal trouble too.  However, in the dirtiest of political campaigns, defamation is the name of the game.  That is what Obama is running: the dirtiest of political campaigns.    Even still, cries of one’s opponent being a “felon” are usually relegated to the third party shenanigans of an “issues” candidate who has no hope of winning.  Such charges could also be associated with peanut gallery observers and shock personalities like Sean Hannity or Bill Maher.  However, now it is also a tactic of the Obama campaign.

Can Obama sacrifice all credibility and still win?

Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for the Obama campaign, suggested that Mitt Romney is either a liar or a felon and could face criminal prosecution.  Why?  Because either she is a liar, or the Obama administration is incompetent when it comes to corporate structures and SEC filings.

At issue is whether Mitt Romney was running the show at Bain Capital after 1999.  Everyone at Bain Capital, including Democrat Obama supporters, say no.  Everyone at the Olympics say Romney was there.  The only people who think Romney was at Bain after 1999 are in Obama’s campaign.  They blame Romney for everything that happened in Bain up to 2002.  Kind of like how they still are blaming Bush for 8.2% unemployment.

So why do Cutter and Obama think Romney is a felon?  The Boston Globe came out with a story showing that Romney signed SEC documents as the President, Director and CEO of Bain Capital up until 2002.  The Washington Post, Fortune Magazine and Factcheck.org explain this.  Romney left to save the Olympics before any sort of replacement could be found and remained listed as President and CEO until his shares were passed on.

Typically liberal Washington Post embarrasses Obama even more with a follow up fact check story, giving Obama another three Pinocchios.

Obama’s outright false and defamatory Bain attack is designed to get Romney to release more tax returns.  Obama believes he is gaining ground by highlighting the low percentage Romney pays in taxes.  However, another Washington Post factcheck story shows that even this line of attack is dishonest.  In fact, one of the reasons Romney’s tax rate is lower is because he gives as much to charity as he pays in taxes.

Media organizations have not been able to back Obama up on this one.  Even CNN’s John King backed up Romney’s side of the story.

In addition to exposing himself as a liar and a dirty campaigner, Obama has exposed himself to an easy rebuttal from the Romney campaign.  In fact, while Obama’s campaign is cheering any unfair negative press they can get on Romney, the result is Romney sitting in front of CNN, Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC cameras, on their dime, explaining how Obama is wrong and not living up to his promises of running an issues centered campaign.

In fact, as John Sununu pointed out, Obama’s bringing up things like felonies and outsourcing is really a liability for Obama.  Obama can be tied to Tony Rezko, Rod Blagojavich, Bill Ayers, and more recently Eric Holder and the Fast and Furious scandal.  You want to talk about secretive.

Here is my challenge to the Obama campaign.  Bain executives, Olympic executives, and anyone who knew Romney in 1999 knew that he was no more running Bain Capital than Bush was running a timber company in 2004.  So why doesn’t Obama send Eric Holder to arrest Mitt Romney for listing himself as CEO of Bain in 2002?  It wouldn’t be a waste of Holder’s time, he’s busy not turning Fast and Furious documents over to Congress and not enforcing Congress’s vote of contempt against him.  Send Holder to arrest Romney for supposedly committing the felony of being the president of a company he wasn’t running or involved with.  Then we can all have a good belly laugh at Obama and get on with our lives.

Obama has been consistently dishonest in this election season.  Eventually more people than just the political junkies like you and me will figure this out.  When a President lies several times during a campaign, the average joe on the street might miss every instance.  When a President lies continually, eventually every American will experience his dishonesty.  And when not even CNN and the Washington Post can backup Obama, his credibility is gone.  Can Obama win with no credibility?

Obama Rust Belt Tour Based on a Lie

Obama is getting ready to board his Canadian made campaign bus and tour the rust belt states touting his message of economic recovery, and Romney’s record of outsourcing jobs at Bain.  There’s only one major glaring problem with this tour’s premise:

Bain has asserted and left-leaning factcheck.org has confirmed that Bain Capital did not outsource jobs under Mitt Romney’s leadership.  Obama’s bus tour is based on a lie.

Meanwhile, Obama is the President who took Chrysler from its US bondholders and sold it cheap to Italy.  Obama is the President who has limited US oil drilling while giving billions of tax payer dollars to Brazil so they can drill there.  Then, in what one Yahoo! business commentator called a result of Obama’s incompetence, Brazil didn’t even sell the oil they extracted to us.  They sold it to China instead.  So while Obama is falsely accusing Romney of outsourcing jobs, Obama is stopping US energy jobs and instead financing Brazil’s energy sales to China.  Way to go, Mr. President.

Obama is basing his campaign thus far on two propositions: his base will vote for him no matter how openly dishonest he is, and independents will not educate themselves about his lies.  If these two factors hold up, the left’s ambivalence and the center’s ignorance will help Obama win in 2012.