Paul Krugman "Father of Lies"

Daniel Henninger has a great column on how David Plouffe signaled to his people to spread the word that Romney is a liar, after Mitt cleaned Barry's clock in their one-on-one last week.

Other than the fact that calling opponents liars is so natural to their politics, one wonders why the Obama people think this will have deep political resonance. The idea that they can make voters who live outside the political steam baths believe that a man running for the presidency would stand in front of 67 million people and literally "lie" about a proposal to change the federal tax code is ludicrous. Every other time he talks, Barack Obama says "millionaires" should pay more taxes, when all his proposed tax increases clearly start at individual incomes of $200,000. That isn't a "lie." It's a president taking three steps to make a layup. This tack won't erode Mr. Romney's new support and may do damage to the president's candidacy. The polls aren't jumping around because Mitt Romney is a bamboozler. They're moving because the 2012 electorate is volatile. The first debate proved voters are looking for answers to their economic anxiety. The Obama campaign's resurrection of "liar" as a political tool is odious because it has such a repellent pedigree. It dates to the sleazy world of fascist and totalitarian propaganda in the 1930s. It was part of the milieu of stooges, show trials and dupes. These were people willing to say anything to defeat their opposition. Denouncing people as liars was at the center of it. The idea was never to elevate political debate but to debauch it. The purpose of calling someone a liar then was not merely to refute their ideas or arguments. It was to nullify them, to eliminate them from participation in politics. That's what is so unsettling about a David Axelrod or David Plouffe following accusations of dishonesty and lies with "whether that person should sit in the Oval Office." And that is followed by President Obama himself feeding the new line in stump speeches without himself ever using the L-word. This Obama campaign is saying, We don't want to compete with Mitt Romney. We want to obliterate him. How did it happen that an accusation once confined to the lowest, whiskey-soaked level of politics or rank propaganda campaigns is occurring daily in American politics? No one has worked harder to revive this low-rent tactic than New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. To my knowledge, Mr. Krugman is the only columnist writing for a major publication in U.S. journalism who has so routinely and repetitively accused people of being liars. It began with the charge that Bush lied about WMD and became almost banal in its repetition after that. In a September 2008 piece on the GOP convention, "Blizzard of Lies," the New York Times' heir to Reston, Wicker, Krock and Safire blew the floodgates: "they're all out-and-out lies"; "the blizzard of lies"; "a grotesque lie" and "the McCain campaign's lies." The Obama campaign is saying "Romney lied," because Paul Krugman made it the coin of their realm.

There's no doubt that the Chicago Mafiosi will stoop to the lowest levels to drag Mitt into the mud where they live.