Rudy Campaign To Media: We're Going To Keep Lying About Health Care -- And There's Nothing You Can Do About It
October 31, 2007 -- 11:29 AM EST // //
The other day, Paul Krugman asserted that Rudy's ongoing dissembling about health care presents a big challenge to our media. He's right -- and that challenge just got more pressing, because there's been a new development on this front.
First, a quick recap: As many have blogged about already, Rudy released an ad the other day saying that the survival rate from prostate cancer is much higher in America than in Britain, something which allegedly proves what a disaster socialized medicine has been. The only problem, of course, is that this claim has been thoroughly debunked by Ezra Klein and others. This quite naturally prompted Krugman to wonder whether Rudy's almost comic level of mendacity on this would attract anywhere near the attention given to Edwards' $400 haircut and other similar Dem tales.
But it gets better -- or, rather, it gets worse.
The Rudy campaign has now blithely confirmed that they are going to keep on telling this lie. The New York Times has a new article out today on the whole affair that debunks this claim even more thoroughly than it had been already, pointing out that the Rudy campaign's source for the claim, of all things, is the conservative mag City Journal. That's bad enough. But check out this little nugget at the end of the piece about Rudy spokesperson Maria Comella's response to all this:
Asked if Mr. Giuliani would continue to repeat the statistic, and if the advertisement would continue to run, Ms. Comella responded by e-mail: "Yes. We will."Memo to media: Rudy and his campaign think you're a bunch of chumps. They have nothing but complete contempt for the truth and for everything that purportedly led you all to become journalists. Maybe it's time to get serious about what this guy is up to.
On this score, I'd like to broaden Krugman's challenge a bit and ask this again: When is Rudy's chronic and cheerfully audacious mendacity going to become part of the official media narrative of Campaign 2008? Reporters have done a good job debunking this latest Rudy lie. But when will the pundits start talking about this constant dissembling -- oh, heck, constant lying -- as an overarching Rudy character trait, in the same manner that we heard endlessly about alleged Dem flaws such as Al Gore's serial exaggerating, John Kerry's effeteness and obfuscation, John Edwards' phoniness, and Hillary's penchant for political calculation?
Rudy's chronic dishonesty -- on everything from health care to taxes to his own 9/11 performance -- just couldn't be more blatant. He's basically flaunting it in the face of the media at this point. He's all but saying to the press, "bring it on." So when will pundits start talking about Rudy in these terms?
When?
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