Following his universally panned first debate performance, Barack Obama's campaign shifted the tone and tenor of their attacks against challenger Mitt Romney. Before the debate Romney was the out-of-touch millionaire with off-shore tax havens seeking to tax the middle class in order to give the top 1% a tax break. Romney looked down upon the 47% hard working Americans who, according to Obama, paid their fair share of taxes while Romney paid only 14% of his income in taxes.
Now Romney is a liar.
Calling your opponent a liar is nothing new in Presidential campaigns and certainly it cannot be called a hitherto-unseen low in politics. Presidential politics have always been negative and nasty. It is one thing to call your opponent confused, wrong, mistaken or out-of-touch - it is an entirely different thing to say your opponent lies.
Senator John McCain commented on Obama's tactic, "I’ve never seen anything like these continuous attacks. Calling Mitt Romney a liar? That’s not an elevated debate,” he said." McCain forgets he called Obama a liar during the 2008 campaign, “I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed,” McCain said."
While it may not be new in politics, it certainly is unusual for a sitting president's re-election campaign to call the challenger dishonest and a liar. Ann Romney called the comments "poor sportsmanship." It's not a good sign when the accusation appears to be your main message in a re-election campaign.
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