Emergent GOP Election Tactics

The New York Times reports that the continuing rise of Elizabeth Warren is prompting GOP propagandists to ratchet up their dark free speech tactics against her. The NYT writes:

An email from the Republican National Committee on Tuesday offered a clear preview of how the party would seek to undermine her if she becomes the Democratic nominee: “It’s not just her heritage Fauxcahontas has been lying about to get ahead. Like her false claim of Native American status, this is another example of Warren seemingly shifting the facts of her life story for personal gain.” (Ms. Warren has said she did not advance her career by identifying herself as Native American, an assertion backed up by an extensive Boston Globe investigation.)

“The more examples like this that surface, the more it will stick with voters that this is someone who cannot be trusted,” Ms. Harrington [a GOP operative] said.

Regardless, the Republican National Committee dismissed Ms. Warren’s description of losing her job, citing a 2007 interview in which she discussed her public-school teaching career but did not mention being forced out, as well as records showing that the school board had approved a contract for Ms. Warren for the next school year.

The NYT points out that the president will “tear down” any Democratic nominee for 2020, just as he did to political opponents in both parties in the 2016 election. Conservatives are also now rejecting as a lie, Warren’s story about losing a teaching job in 1971 because she was pregnant. Warren stands by her story, but that has put her on the defensive, arguably weakening her credibility. It is clear that the GOP will smear, lie and do anything possible to destroy any credible political threat to the president.

The hypocrisy here is obvious. None of the lies that the president has inundated the American people with ever since he announced his candidacy have much or any negative impact on the perceptions of the president's honesty or trustworthiness among most conservatives. For the most part, conservatives accept the president’s lies and deceit as harmless or non-existent, but they will find every democrat lie and amplify it into something hideous.

In a another article, the Washington Post reports that although Facebook has been active in trying to tamp down on disinformation on its platform, it codified a loophole last year. Politicians will continue to be allowed to lie as much as they want on Facebook. Facebook will continue to try to stop regular people from spreading viral falsehoods, but politicians have a green light to be liars.

The reason for Facebook’s move is obvious. WaPo writes:

This decision, put into place last year, has sparked a sharp backlash this week among Democrats, who complain that it gives President Trump free rein to use major social media platforms as disinformation machines. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a leading presidential candidate, made this point in a Facebook ad Thursday in which she joked that the company had endorsed Trump, adding that its policies allow “a candidate to intentionally lie to the American people.”

Warren’s ad was the latest salvo in a growing campaign by Democrats to pressure social media companies to curb Trump’s ability to push demonstrably untrue information on their platforms. Last week, Democrat Joseph Biden asked Facebook to remove a Trump campaign ad that made false claims, prompting the company to refuse on the grounds that political speech is not covered by the expansive fact-checking system it put in place after the 2016 presidential election.

Facebook is probably not endorsing the president so much as it is trying to protect its revenues, profits and freedom from regulations and vindictive politicians who want to lie to the public. Regardless of what they may say to the contrary, probably most American companies operate on the immoral premise that anything that threatens revenues and profits is immoral and is to be avoided whenever possible. For the most part, the business of business is privatizing profit as much as possible and externalizing costs and risks as much as possible. Making America a better, more equitable place is not on the agenda. That immoral mindset dictates that Facebook allows politicians to be liars.

Facebook users: Caveat emptor -- GOP lies will keep coming. The question is whether democrats will respond in kind, and if they do, whether on balance it would help them or hurt them. The guess from here is that it would probably hurt more than help. To some extent, maybe that reflects an ideological asymmetry in attitudes toward political lies.