LAST TIME I singled out a line in the Republican Pledge to America which very artfully implied that Obama wished to raise taxes on more than half of the tiny family businesses in America.
I pointed out that this was not true at all, that in fact Obama was simply refusing to lower taxes on about 3% of extremely wealthy small businesses.
The line in the pledge was phrased like this:
[Obama] wants to raise taxes on roughly half of small business income in America.
It counted on the fact that most people, upon hearing that line, would not realize that "half the income" belonged to just 3% of the wealthiest businesses, and not the other 97%.
And I said, at the end of the post, that this kind of spin provided an easy escape hatch for Republicans if they were caught in their lie.
Here's an example of how the escape hatch works.
When CBS's Bob Schieffer confronted John Boehner on this very claim, listen to how he replied:
"Well, it may be three percent, but it's half of small business income.
"Because, obviously, the top three percent have half of the gross income for those companies that we would term small businesses. And this is why you don't want to punish these people at a time when you have a weak economy."
Never mind that the reply makes no sense—why would the fact that these few people are making as much as the other 97% of all small businesses combined be a reason not to tax them?
And, in fact, it's clear to anybody who pays attention that no matter how John Boehner tries to spin this talking point, its real purpose was to mislead voters into thinking that Obama was trying to raise taxes on half the small family businesses in the county.
The only thing his reply actually does is cover his lie.
He knows full well what impression he intended to give, and that it wasn't true.
A sentence intentionally designed to mislead others is a lie—no matter what the literal meaning is.
But because he has carefully misled us with fancy wording, he can claim not to have lied, and therefore continue to repeat the line—knowing that most people will hear just what he wants them to hear: the lie.
So, to sum things up, these lines, taken from the official Republican pledge, are intentionally designed to make you to believe:
-
That Obama is planning to raise taxes, when in fact Republicans raised them, and he just isn't planning to lower them,
-
That the taxes in question are on 50% of the small businesses in the country, when in fact they are only on the wealthiest 3%,
-
That they are on tiny mom and pop type businesses, when they are really only on the very wealthy,
-
That economists agree that this is a bad idea in a recession, when in fact there is no such agreement, and
-
That the American people agree that a tax give-away to the top 3% when we are having trouble balancing the budget is a good idea, when there is no evidence that we do agree.
Republicans know full well that not one of these things are true.
But they don't care.
They don't care because they think that enough people will believe them to make a difference in the coming election.
But why this particular lie?
Next: Why this Particular Lie...
