I recognize a cheap shot when I see one. That’s why my post about the latest ad from Priorities USA was entitled Have a Groin Shot. But I also pointed out that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have done a thing to help that man get cancer treatment for his wife even if he had been directly responsible for her predicament. Contra DougJ, I don’t celebrate that ad because it shows that we’re willing to fight fire with fire. The only thing I’ll say in the ad’s defense is that we take attacks like that all day long from hate radio and Fox News and the rest of the Mighty Right-Wing Wurlitizer, and I don’t see Anderson Cooper getting his knickers in a twist about that too often.
The factual liberties in that ad are actually a bad idea because it makes it a lot easier to make the “both-sides-do it” argument. The inaccuracies are unnecessary. And if you don’t think his story packs enough punch when told straight, find someone else whose story requires less tweaking. The Bain Capital story doesn’t require any embellishment or exaggeration, so we shouldn’t undermine the power of our message with embellishment and exaggeration.
Here is the real story. Regardless of how many people Mitt Romney laid off when he owned Bain Capital, when he was the governor of Massachusetts he thought that no one should die because they didn’t have employer-provided health care. And he did something about it. But he has totally disavowed that philosophy. So, decisions made by Bain Capital cost a man his job and his health care, which ultimately meant that his wife delayed seeing a doctor and didn’t have any insurance when she found out that she was sick with cancer. Romney had a solution for that problem when he was governor, but he has no solution for that problem now.
His new motto is “tough luck,” which is the same as his original motto. If we stick with that storyline, we’ll win this election without having to make any distortions of any kind.
I am not opposed to fighting dirty when your opponent acknowledges no rules, but I don’t like fighting dirty when fighting clean is even more effective.
