What can be done to respond to the lies that are inevitably spread during political campaigns? If the candidate being attacked denies them, they often just help spread the lies more. But if they don’t respond to them, then people will think they are true.
So it is very interesting to see how the Obama campaign is responding to a $6.1 million attack ad launched by the Koch brothers. Here’s the attack ad:
The claims in this ad were all debunked by all three major fact checking organizations: PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, and The Fact Checker. And yet here they are again, being repeated “without any shame“.
So what can Obama do? I am reminded of Ronald Reagan’s famous response of “There you go again” to an attack from Jimmy Carter during a 1980 presidential debate. I think you can respond, but the response has to be a counter-attack.
I think the Obama campaign did a reasonably good job with the response:
What do you think? Will this response make any difference? I guess at the very least we got to see Stephanie Cutter say “BS”.
3 Comments
Sue the for something, defamation of character, knowingly lying to someone blah blah blah
Politicians have tried that. Didn’t work. Definitely made them look even worse.
I am going to admit that I put this on Facebook and Twitter mainly because of Cutter saying “BS”. 🙂 It’s about time the Dems grew some cajones.