Sargent: Call Out Romney's Lies

Wow...is the press showing signs of life?

Greg Sargent urges newspapers to call out Romney's repeated, shameless lies "right in your headlines." He also writes:

I didn’t expect this, but the epic dishonesty of Romney’s campaign is finally prompting something of a debate among media types about whether what we’re seeing here is unprecedented — and how to appropriately respond to it. This debate is focused partly on whether there’s a racial dimension to this attack. But it’s also about (as I noted here yesterday) what the media should do when one campaign has decided that there is literally no set of boundaries or standards it needs to follow when it comes to the veracity of the core assertions at the heart of its entire argument.

I've thought that the Obama camp needs to be much more forceful and diligent in calling out the lies. In fact, it's something that so clearly needs to be done that I'm wondering whether they're executing a rope-a-dope, waiting for the case against Romney to be irrefutable before bringing the hammer down. A few well-done ads along these lines would not only defuse almost all of Romney's main lines of attack, it would also score something very close to a knock-out blow against him at the same time. People already dislike him--it shouldn't be that hard to show them that they also can't trust him.

But, however that turns out, at least the press might be on the verge of doing its duty...