The final argument why I could never vote for Mitt Romney

It's because of the Romney "Jeep/Chrysler/Fiat is taking jobs to China" ad (and now it's two ads from what I understand). Here is an NPR story about the ad with it's history and progress.

It started a comment in a campaign stop where Mitt Romney said he read an article in Bloomberg saying Fiat, who owns a controlling stake in Chrysler, was moving the Jeep jobs in Ohio (Toledo) to China. Okay, I can accept that in the rush of the campaign he read, or was told about, the article and how Jeep was going to add jobs to their production in China and it got all twisted around. It's a fast passed campaign.

But then Chrysler came out and clarified what they were doing. No, in fact they're expanding production in Toledo. The China jobs were always China jobs and the Chinese production is for sale only in China.

The Romney Campaign persisted in saying, "ZOMG, jobs to China. Your bailout money!"

Then Bloomberg issued a clarification saying, that's not what our article said.

And then the Romney Campaign released the ads (this is the TV ad).

Then the fact checkers weighed in. Another pants on fire rating. Last I checked, not only was the Romney Campaign leading in false claims, their ratings for those ads skew to the worse end of the rating scales.

And then the Romney Campaign doubled down with more ads. They've adjusted how they say it but while grammatically not saying the same thing, the difference isn't noticeable by more than grammatical enthusiasts. The ad reads the same to everybody else.

Like I said, I can understand misreading an article. I've seen that a lot. "That word you're using. I dunna think it means what you think it means." Oh yeah, I've had that conversation a lot. It's even happened to me enough times that I try to double read things, verify with other sources (when I have time), etc. So, at the campaign stop, okay, it was wrong but understandable. Fair cop.

But to continue to use the line that has been proven wrong, been proven wrong to your campaign, been proven wrong to your face, been proven wrong in the public sphere, to continue that argument is either a sign of complete incompetence, being whipped by the process, or a complete, sneering contempt of the American public. This ad is aimed at the low-information voter, which typically tends to fall into the same demographic as the 47% Romney doesn't care about (in the Veen diagram of both of those, there is significant overlap, for some very obvious reasons that when your at the lower end of the economy, your attention is being spent living, it's basic Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs).

It's because of that (the contempt, the inability to admit mistakes, and the shameless ability to lie) that I could never vote for Mitt Romney. I wouldn't even trust him (as the saying goes) as dog catcher. How he is polling as high as he is points to a moral failing as a nation.

As I've said before, I was really looking forward to this election as one based on ideals and vision. A challenge of ideas of how to make a stronger country. Instead we got this shit. Mitt isn't the first conservative (or liberal) I've come to this conclusion about. When John McCain started his presidential bid by speaking at Jones University, he lost my vote (in 2000, McCain's bid was based on getting the GOP out from under the yoke of the religious right). Mitt Romney's campaign hasn't gone twice as bad, they've described a hyperbolic curve in how far they've veered away. What's worse is that either way the election goes, the GOP won't learn the lessons they should. If Mitt Romney is elected, his strategy will be vindicated. If Mitt Romney loses, the GOP will rationalize the loss by claiming voter fraud, and that they hadn't chosen a candidate that was sufficiently conservative.