{"id":745,"date":"2011-06-08T08:58:53","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T06:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=745"},"modified":"2015-04-22T11:34:55","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T09:34:55","slug":"the-pinocchio-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/the-pinocchio-factor\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pinocchio factor"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a time when politicians used to be quoted for saying wise things \u2014 things like “Everyone is entitled to<\/span> their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” (Daniel Patrick Moynihan<\/a>)<\/p>\n

These days, they’re usually quoted for things they shouldn’t have said.<\/p>\n

Republicans know they have a chance of beating Barack Obama in next year’s presidential election because the economy is so weak. But the best-known Republican candidates are undermining that chance because of their own credibility issues<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Mitt Romney<\/b>, perhaps the candidate with the best odds<\/span>, approved<\/span> the creation of a program of state-run health insurance while he was governor of Massachusetts. Other Republicans find this unacceptable and have quite virulently<\/span> attacked him. So Romney now says his top priority if elected will be to repeal<\/span> Barack Obama’s health-care reforms, in spite of their similarity to those he approved.<\/p>\n

Tim Pawlenty<\/b>, the governor of Minnesota until this past January, said<\/a> yesterday that he does not want couples earning less than $100,000 to pay taxes, nor does he want wealthier people to pay capital-gains<\/span>, dividend or estate<\/span> taxes. Fair enough.<\/span> He also said that he had balanced the budget<\/span> in his state, which he was required to do by law. However, he left Minnesota with a multi-billion-dollar debt<\/span> which is the fourth highest in the country.<\/p>\n

Newt Gingrich<\/b> has worked hard to establish himself as a kind of elder statesman<\/span> since his forced resignation as Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s. But he angered many Republicans last month when he disagreed with a very unpopular Republican strategy to privatize Medicare<\/span>. “I don’t think imposing<\/span> radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate,” he said \u2014 but days later, pressure from the Republican establishment forced him to eat his words<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Sarah Palin<\/b> has not announced her candidacy, but she probably will. A documentary film<\/a> about her political career will be shown later this month in the four states that hold the first primary elections<\/span>. But she would be wise to hire a history tutor. On June 2, and again on June 5, the former Alaska governor said the Revolutionary War began not with messenger Paul Revere warning the leaders of the revolution that the British army was on its way, but with Revere warning the British<\/a> “that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms”.<\/p>\n

Michele Bachmann<\/b>, a self-appointed<\/span> leader of the “Tea Party” movement, received four “Pinocchios”<\/a> (The Washington Post<\/i>‘s worst rating) for a reaction to Barack Obama’s remark two weeks ago that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually<\/span> agreed swaps”. The Minnesota representative quickly put out an Internet ad saying that Obama had “betrayed<\/span> Israel” \u2014 and thus broken the biggest taboo in American politics. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, however, said he agreed with Obama’s statement.<\/p>\n

These and other episodes are causing not just embarrassment, but also infighting<\/span> within the Republican Party. This leaves Democrats jubilant<\/span> and many Republicans hoping that a more credible candidate will come along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a time when politicians used to be quoted for saying wise things \u2014 things like “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” (Daniel Patrick Moynihan) These days, they’re usually quoted for things they shouldn’t have said. Republicans know they have a chance of beating Barack Obama in next year’s presidential election because … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[27,51,22,239,153,205,145,238,29,107,143],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1316,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/1316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}