Why do Republicans lie so much? And how do they get away with it?

We lie just as much as any other demographic.

Including democrats. :)

Their target audience has a lower average level of consciousness.

@mowens He means Republican Party leaders, congresspersons, and media talking heads, not rank and file Republicans.

For the record, while Luntz may be encouraging them to say things that are lies, he does not actually say: “lie like crazy” or even “lie”.

I think anyone will say that the “other guys” are worse than themselves. So since you’re a democrat (well I suppose there are other demographics, but I’m assuming you’re part of the large groups.), you’re saying republicans lie alot. I think someone completely unbiased would have to actually check out the facts and figure it out.

I think their basic belief system involves so much cognitive dissonance that they force themselves to stop asking questions, stop examining beliefs, and accept anything that’s told to them. And then they need to tell these lies to maintain their inherently contradictory beliefs.

@nikipedia
One could (and does!) say the same things about Democrats.

Have you never heard that if a politician’s mouth is moving ~ s/he’s lying? That is not party specific, and certainly not only in high places. Local politicians lie as much or more. I think Republican’s flair comes in implication and suggestion about their ‘opponents’, but even that’s a lie because they’re mostly all buddies when the cameras aren’t rolling.

Politicians lie all of the time, in every country, in every Party, anywhere on the political spectrum. That’s what happens when you care more about being re-elected than about your constituents. In the US, our founfing fathers thought that wise, responsible citizens would take some time out of their lives, and then return, like Cincinattus, to their homes.

@Snarp If someone asked me to say things that aren’t true than they are asking me to lie.

The bigger question might be why do people fall for all of that crap, actually want to believe the lies. They want to, they love it. Love hating and ganging up on the other side. I have a relative like that, everyone else is horrible so that she can feel good about herself. But, I digress.

Saying “politicians lie” just doesn’t explain what is going on here. The Republicans are lying on a scale and with such lunacy that is orders of magnitude beyond anything the Democrats are doing. Where on the Democratic side do you find anything like the birthers, the deathers and the Obama is a socialist and a fascist?

The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, the Rachel Maddow Show, Countdown, and Hardball spend a lot of their show each day fact checking and debunking Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and, of course, the Republicans in Congress.

I’m sure if I wanted to argue needlessly (part of the job description of any politician), I could bring up stats and lies and polls about democrats, independents, republicans and others alike. Being dishonest with alacrity is a staple ingredient in the mud pie that is politics.

@Pandora I just don’t think it’s fair, no matter how bad Luntz or his advice may be, to say something like @Zuma‘s link does: “Well as Frank Luntz explains to congressional Republicans, you just lie like crazy.” It suggests to the reader that “lie like crazy” are Luntz’s words, and they’re not. You can use a little rhetorical flair, but you also have to make very clear what are your words and what are your subject’s, which this doesn’t. You’ve got to be accurate, particularly when you are accusing the other side of lying.

Because their pants are on the floor.

@Zuma To me that is a different phenomenon than lying, and it is certainly not limited to Republicans. A lot of Independents are birthers and deathers and whatevers, and I believe it is because they are just beginning to understand that they are about to lose a majority status that they have held for 400 years, and they are very destabilized and frightened and angry.

I have to say that I agree with @Zuma‘s central thesis, namely that Republicans in positions of influence tell more, bigger, and more public lies than their Democratic counterparts, and having actual elected representatives of the people suggesting that Obama is not a citizen or that the health care plan would involve forced euthanasia, both of which happened, are certainly good examples.

You can see evidence from a source less biased than @Zuma and myself though, just check out Politifact for some information. They call Democrats out for all sorts of lies, big and small, but you’ll find far more Republican lies in their list, usually, and certainly during the 2008 election.

Of course there will be those who claim that they are just part of the liberal media elite and therefore are biased, but one has to set some limits about what is a reasonable source, and they can’t all be the ones that are clearly biased in your favor.

And in case you can’t find it easily on the site, Politifact is the work of the St. Petersburg Times, one of the last independent newspapers still doing actual journalism in the United States.

I’m gonna say “zomg, bias in teh meedeeuhz!” and call it a day.

@Snarp You are correct, nowhere in his 17-page memo does Luntz say “lie like crazy” he just explains, step by step how to lie in an a most egregious way.

If anyone is unconvinced that Republicans lie a lot more, and more serious lies, I can point you to a slew of well-researched books on the subject. Or, if you are still unconvinced, or you can simply google “Republican Lies” and see what you get. I think the folks at snopes also acknowledge that more of the stuff they fact check and find false comes more from the Right than the Left.

Obviously the reason that there are more Republican lies than Democratic ones in the media is that the media is all completely biased in favor of Democrats. ~

Okay. So I went to Politifact and I tried to see if they had done any analysis of which party lies more. I couldn’t find it, so I did it myself.

I went through the first three pages of the most egregious, blatant lies—these receiving the “Pants on Fire!” rating by Politifact. I excluded anything that could not be objectively assigned a party affiliation, such as chain emails or Christopher Monckton, who is British and an avowed conservative but cannot actually identify as either Republican or Democrat.

Anyway. Both groups are represented. Democrats certainly appeared on the list. But 86% of the most egregious lies reported on Politifact were told by Republicans. (14% by Democrats.)

My analysis is available here.

Call me naive or a follower but I think Obama nails the issue on the head – he called out the republicans in their own caucus on the whole political game of attack and defense. I agree with him when he says it’s time to put the childish nonsense aside and work together on our country that’s been crumbling over the years.

Politicians lie to brainwash enough listeners, push their own agenda and to attack the other side.

@Zuma
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”

I do understand your question and position, Zuma, and found nikipedia’s research right-on. I use Republican as a litmus test ~ if someone is one, chances are we won’t be friends. If the lies are outrageously libelous, what does it say about the people who believe and support them?

This has been a longstanding Republican strategy. Create straw-men to fire up the base with distortions and lies (Gay marriage, flag burning, Willie Horton, etc.) and then convince them to vote against their best interests. For example, why would an uninsured person be against the health care plan or for tax cuts for the wealthy? Well, if national health care = death panels or massive, expensive (Bush) tax cuts are hidden by an anti-Gay agenda, there you go….

The stupidification of America continues.

@shilolo
I don’t think that we need The Health Care Bill, at least not as it stands. Hospitals, at least, are very reasonable about repayment options when it comes to the uninsured.

@Nullo They’re reasonable because more often than not they expect to get nothing from the uninsured. To actually get a little something beats nothing. You clearly don’t see the people who don’t get preventative care so their asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. etc. is out of control, and they suffer much worse than if we spent just a little on prevention (i.e. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”) Also, from a broad economic standpoint, our overall economy would do better because companies would be freed from having to provide expensive health care for their workers and retirees. Our companies are at a competitive disadvantage compared to say, a French or German company, that don’t have to shoulder that massive burden.

@Nullo – Those of us without healthcare insurance disagree. We need a comprehensive healthcare bill and affordable healthcare NOW. Of course, there are those that apparently don’t want everyone to have a chance.

I love those sneaky b@$t@rd$!HOT!!Pssssst!;))

@Nullo I know this is a tangent (so I apologize), but a perfect example is the recent death of Brittany Murphy. Now, she was neither uninsured (I assume) or unable to pay out of pocket, but, her death from pneumonia was preventable had she seen a doctor sooner. She opted for cold medications at home, which is a typical scenario that I see. People who are uninsured try really hard to avoid the health care system (for it’s costs), and then when they do come in, they are super sick or near death (or simply die, like Brittany Murphy). Consequently, the costs for their care are staggering compared to if they had seen a doctor sooner and gotten an oral antibiotic. A $50 prescription for azithromycin is far cheaper than a $100,000 admission to the ICU for severe pneumonia/septic shock (not to mention better for the patient…).

@Dracool LMAO, I never looked at it that way. That was amusing because of the truth behind it. I have a friend who is a republican and when she makes statements about the current administration and Obama, my brain hurts. The republicans according to her have old fashion goals that will make america great once more. At least thats what I interpet from all the jibberish.

Hear, hear @shilolo!

@Nullo One big fat Republican lie is that we don’t need health care reform

Americans spend the most of any country on earth—$2.26 trillion, of 16% of GDP. And yet, our system ranks 37th in overall performance and 72nd by overall level of health (out of 191 member nations). The reason we get so little for our money is that we do have not just one health care system but four—a first-class system for the minority among us who can afford to buy the best possible health care system available, and a second-class system based on employer-provided private insurance, consisting of somewhat more limited services, availability, and limited affordability.

There is a distinctly third-class publicly-funded system, which is characterized by means testing; which is to say, you have to prove you are poor enough qualify, after which you get very basic coverage, a poor quality service, which is purposely made balky and adversarial so as to provide an affront to your dignity, so that you only apply to the system when you absolutely have to. And, finally, we have a fourth-class, consisting of about 47 million people who have no health care at all; and who shift and make do from the scraps and leftovers of the other systems. These are the people who manage to stay well enough to forgo the indignities of the third-class system until they are absolutely forced to go to an emergency room.

We like to think our system is the greatest on earth. But in terms of infant mortality the US ranks 41st out of 221 nations in the world. In terms of Life Expectancy, the US ranks 45th—behind Cuba, most of Europe, Israel, Greece, Puerto Rico, Bosnia and Canada.

Indeed, how is it that Americans manage to pay $7,439 pay per person per year and in health expenditures, and not only fail to get universal coverage, but somehow manage to achieve a poorer standard of health than France, which pays $3,048 per person for its universal health care system? Germany pays $2,983, for its universal health care system; Italy, pays $2,314 for its system; Japan, pays $2,249; the United Kingdom, pays $2,417; and Canada, spends $3,326 per person universal health care system.

Indeed, how is it that we manage to spend $7,439 per person per year on a system that delivers a standard of health care that falls somewhere between Puerto Rico, Portugal and Ireland?

The answer is simple: The governments of other countries design their health care systems to provide the maximum possible health benefits, while the American system is designed to provide the maximum profits for private health care company CEOs and their shareholders. In America, the Insurance companies essentially designs the health care system. And it has designed a system that denies people coverage if they have preexisting conditions. It forces people to stay in jobs the don’t like just to keep their health benefits. It is riddled with all kinds of exclusions and exceptions that deny people benefits they have actually paid for. There are high deductibles and low life-time limits on benefits. Insurance companies can raise your premiums or cancel your coverage if you get sick. The current system requires you to get prior approval for a wide variety of specialist services, drugs and medical devices, and it routinely denies those requests, so that you have to appeal two or three times to get the care you need. Doctors have to hire extra personnel just to hassle with insurance companies. It’s billing is non-uniform, duplicative, and highly susceptible to waste, fraud and abuse.

And health inflation is growing because there is absolutely nothing to restrain it. It is quickly becoming unaffordable, and it is consuming an ever-expanding share of GDP, and about 28% of it goes to “administrative overhead” compared to 3% under Medicare.

@Zuma
I said, “As it stands.” Reform certainly wouldn’t hurt; true reform never does.

@Nullo I see, its not reform because it’s not “true” reform. If it were “true” reform, then Republicans would vote for it. Is that right?

@Pandora You nailed it with “my brain hurts.” When someone is outspokenly proud of their simplistic and media-fed nationist, sexist, racist, classist “values”, it’s enough to make even the lobotomized brain hurt:)

@Dracool or enough to make a nihilist sick, ironically enough =P

@Zuma

@Nullo <—-Not a Republican.

This is an easy one, US citizens a whole are stupid and lazy, we perfer to think what others tell us to. So for most of us we find some retarded reson to subscribe to a camp (Dems or Republicans) and let them spoon feed us the lies (or in some cases ram them up our asses). The Masses Are Asses sums this up nicely. Republicans just choose to exploit this more because they dont have any actual platform to stand on.

In most cases politics has less to do with the needs of the people and more to do with the needs of the people in power.

Disclaimer: I am neither Dem or Repub

Bill Clinton (a Democrat) told one of the most outrageous whoppers I have ever heard -“It depends on what the meaning of is is.”

What? That ought to count for several less well known Republicans.