History of Republicans' Systematic Lying

If you think the blatant lies fostered by the Republican Party against President Obama's health care plan is new, you have to read Robert Parry's essay, Palin's 'Death Panel' and GOP Lying.

Parry traces the tactic back to the start of the Reagan administration:

It was during the early Reagan administration that it hit me that falsifying reality was no longer an aberration for Republicans – something done by a politician caught in a tight spot or a debater spinning a losing argument – but had become part and parcel of GOP strategy.

Not that Democrats and other politicians don’t lie or dissemble, too. As a reporter for the Associated Press, I had encountered devious politicians of various stripes while covering Rhode Island politics and Washington’s Capitol Hill in the mid-to-late 1970s.

But something new was afoot in the early 1980s. Republicans were adopting a conscious approach to deception that was qualitatively different from what was common in politics. With the aid of a growing right-wing media, the GOP covered up ghastly crimes by its allies and enflamed public opinion against its adversaries, regardless of the facts.

I first confronted this pattern while covering Reagan’s hard-line policies toward Central America. The lies started just weeks after Reagan’s 1980 election, when four American churchwomen were raped and murdered by government security forces in rightist-ruled El Salvador.

Fascinating.