Jim Messina, President Obama’s campaign manager, says Paul Ryan ‘lied’ in RNC speech
Paul Ryan took center stage at the RNC in Tampa Wednesday night, accepting the VP nomination. The speech is being applauded by supporters and criticized by those at the DNC.
Among those to respond is Jim Messina, President Obama’s Campaign Manager, who claims the Wisconsin representative lied in his speech.
This is the letter that went out to the Obama supporters via email on Thursday morning:
If you’ve seen any coverage of Paul Ryan’s speech in Tampa, you know that the consensus among journalists and independent observers is that it was … factually challenged.
He lied about Medicare. He lied about the Recovery Act. He lied about the deficit and debt. He even dishonestly attacked Barack Obama for the closing of a GM plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin — a plant that closed in December 2008 under George W. Bush. He also failed to offer one constructive idea about what he would do to move the country forward.
Don’t roll your eyes. We can’t just groan and shrug and remark to our like-minded friends that this is ridiculous, because this is a significant moment in this campaign.
The fact that this speech, on this huge stage, is this blatantly false represents a huge bet by the Romney campaign — they’ve decided that facts, truth and reality will not be a brake on their campaign message. And they just signaled to the extremist billionaires and corporate interests that support them that they should go ahead and spend their hundreds of millions of dollars attacking Barack Obama with whatever lies can work.
Jim Messina photo/Pete Souza
