Political lies are still lies!

A lie is a lie, even when it’s a political lie.

Politicians who believe themselves to be people of character somehow seem to think that lies told to support a political agenda are permissible in a way that other lies are not. The latest example of this is former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comment on President Obama’s health care law, which was modeled on the law Romney implemented as governor of Massachusetts.

In advance of President Obama’s October 30, 2013 speech in Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall boosting the Affordable Care Act, Romney reiterated on his Facebook page something he said throughout the 2012 presidential campaign:

In the years since the Massachusetts health care law went into effect nothing has changed my view that a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country.

Yet in 2009 Romney said he was happy that President Obama was adopting the Massachusetts plan, and that it should serve as a model for the rest of the country. He specifically advocated that his approach become the basis for a national health care system. “We’ll end up with a nation that’s taken a mandate approach,” he said approvingly.

But prior to the 2010 Congressional elections Republicans adopted as a campaign tactic a strategy of implacable opposition to “ObamaCare.” The health care plan initially proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation and implemented by Romney as the Republican governor of Massachusetts was relentlessly portrayed as the embodiment of evil once President Obama began advocating it. If he wanted to be the GOP presidential candidate, Romney had to find a way to disavow his own plan. And that’s exactly what he did.

For purposes of his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney maintained over and over that he had always believed and said the exact opposite of we have video of him asserting before support of the president’s health care initiative became the kiss of death for Republicans.

Here’s a video documenting Romney’s statements on health care.

I understand that politicians must accommodate themselves to the wishes of their constituents. And sometimes that may require reversing positions formerly taken. But to flat out deny ever having said what it is clear you did say is not excused by the plea of political necessity.

Revelation 22:14-15 (NKJV)  Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.  15  But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.

The temptation for politicians of whatever party to say anything they think they can get away with in the midst of a hotly contested campaign is strong. But they (and we) must remember that God’s standards of righteousness make no exception for lies told to help a person get elected.

A lie is a lie, even when it’s a political lie.

Ron Franklin