Mitt Romney: Obama was 'just dishonest'

Mitt Romney appeared on CBS This Morning Friday and was asked about the problems with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

Charlie Rose tries to bait Romney into calling the President a liar “for political gain.” He does this as if it would somehow advance the story. Is the President lying some wild conspiracy theory Charlie Rose needs to tease out of the darkness? Aren’t we past that point now?

After the President’s multiple apologies yesterday, it’s not clear why anyone in the media needs help to judge the President a liar. Shouldn’t the evidence of guilt be enough for Charlie Rose? But no, somehow he wants the facts in the public record to become a partisan matter, something alleged by one side.

Romney does a nice job here confirming that Obama’s false promise meets the definition of a lie, albeit without using the word itself. Nevertheless, there’s no missing his point. The President was intentionally dishonest and, yes, it was for political advantage. Simply put, Obama told people what they wanted to hear.

As for why he did it, Byron York has a simple answer. The President would not have gotten his bill through Congress if he had been honest about how it would work.  [h/t for the clip to Noah Rothman]

Romney: The real problem with the President’s plan is not just the rollout–implementation and glitches of various kinds, it should have been done better but it wasn’t–but the real problem that the President has is a broken promise, is dishonesty.

[…]

Rose: But do you think the President lied to the American people on purpose for political gain?

Romney: I think the President understood, it’s now quite well documented that his administraion, he understood that a lot of people would lose their insurance. That was in the nature of the entire product that they put forward. They knew that and yet said “Well you can keep your insurance, period!”

Rose: So how would you characterize that?

Romney: It’s dishonest. It’s just dishonest. What starts twisted stays twisted.