Republicans mugged by reality on Election Day

For Democrats, the 2012 presidential campaign has produced some delicious ironies. For starters, Mitt Romney's share of the final vote will come in at a memorable 47 percent, the same figure he used to disparage half the electorate as self-described "victims" bought off by "free stuff" and "gifts" from President Obama.

But for pure schadenfreude, nothing approaches the cosmic payback of the Republicans' self-delusion on Election Day. That is, while most polling analysts predicted a comfortable Electoral College triumph for Barack Obama on Nov. 6, by all indications Team Romney and the GOP brain trust truly believed their own cooked-up numbers. That's what makes their subsequent shock and awe at Romney's crushing defeat all the more fitting. Because after years of slandering President Obama and misleading voters with myths about taxes, debt, health care, Iraq and so much else, on Election Day Republicans duped only themselves.

To be sure, that karma starts'but certainly does not end with'Mitt Romney himself. The man so fond of proclaiming "I love data" was no friend of the truth. His gymnastic flip-flops and mind-bending mendacity aren't merely the stuff of legend, but produced a burgeoning cottage industry. (Just ask MSNBC's Steve Benen, whose chronicles of Romney's lies topped 970 entries and 40 volumes.) Virtually every major talking point Romney regurgitated'that Obama "made the economy worse," that Obama "doubled the national debt," that "you built that," that Obama "guts welfare reform," that a rescued Chrysler was moving Jeep manufacturing jobs to China'was demonstrably untrue. It's no wonder Romney's pollster Neil Newhouse described his campaign's guiding principle this way in August:

"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers."

That policy made Mitt Romney the perfect front man for the Republican Party. After all, when the number two Senate Republican Jon Kyl admitted in April 2011 that his demagoguery of Planned Parenthood was "not intended to be a factual statement," he could have been describing most GOP sound bites uttered before or since.

That includes the gamut of what might be called the GOP's tactical lies, untruths designed to smear the president, his party, and their policies. Amplified by Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber, these frauds are transformed into conservative certainties. For example, this week Public Policy Polling found that "49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama," an impressive figure given the organization no longer exists. Seventeen percent of registered voters and 30 percent of Republicans still believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. As Election Day approached, roughly half of GOP voters believed Obama was not born in the United States, with another quarter unsure. As it turns out, Mitt Romney eagerly courted the Birther vote, not just by accepting Donald Trump's cash and his endorsement, but with statements like this August joke in Michigan:

"Now I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital. I was born in Harper Hospital. No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."

Other articles of tea party faith are just as bogus.

(Continue reading below the fold.)