Brazen Lies Are Now "the Driving Force Behind GOP Politics"

By Scott Eric Kaufman, Salon

02 November 15

For candidates like Ben Carson, lying is a feature, not a bug

ew York Times columnist Paul Krugman lit into the hopefuls in the GOP’s latest debate for embracing what he considers a “grifter ethos.”

As personified by Ben Carson, who brazenly lied about his connection to Mannatech during Wednesday’s debate, the GOP candidates are participating in a system “in which marketers use political affinity to sell get-rich-quick schemes, miracle cures.”

“Right-wing warnings of imminent hyperinflation, coupled with demands that we return to the gold standard,” are a staple of conservative media, and such statements go unchallenged by Republican hopefuls eager to court the conservative base.

Because, as Krugman wrote,

At a higher level still are operations that are in principle engaging in political activity, but mainly seem to be generating income for their organizers. Last week The Times published an investigative report on some political action committees raising money in the name of anti-establishment conservative causes. The report found that the bulk of the money these PACs raise ends up going to cover administrative costs and consultants’ fees, very little to their ostensible purpose. For example, only 14 percent of what the Tea Party Leadership Fund spends is “candidate focused.”

You might think that such revelations would be politically devastating. But the targets of such schemes know, just know, that the liberal mainstream media can’t be trusted, that when it reports negative stories about conservative heroes it’s just out to suppress people who are telling the real truth. It’s a closed information loop, and can’t be broken…