In The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism, Rick Perlstein begins with a simple enough observation:
Mitt Romney is a liar. Of course, in some sense, all politicians, even all human beings, are liars. Romney’s lying went so over-the-top extravagant by this summer, though, that the New York Times editorial board did something probably unprecedented in their polite gray precincts: they used the L-word itself. “Mr. Romney’s entire campaign rests on a foundation of short, utterly false sound bites,” they editorialized. He repeats them “so often that millions of Americans believe them to be the truth.” “It is hard to challenge these lies with a well-reasoned-but- overlong speech,” they concluded; and how. Romney’s lying, in fact, was so richly variegated that it can serve as a sort of grammar of mendacity.
Not sure why the NYT chose to notice Romney’s blatant lying when they’ve given practically every serial conservative and Republican liar in the past fifty years a pass, but maybe Mitt told just one too many or one too big for them not to call him out on this. Too little; too late according to Perlstein. The culture of lying as virtuous is now deeply rooted in a large segment of the US population. A population that could easily be described as pathological. Repeating weird phrases such as “study it out.”
It’s a terrifying and compelling work by Perlstein. One that should be read in its entirety and not diminished by others cutting and pasting snippets of it regardless of how tempting it is to do that. It’s also more illuminating than all those poll number reports.
