At first I initially wanted to blame the media, but then I had to recognize the fact that there are a number of prominent fact-checkers that have done a fairly thorough and consistent job of pointing out discrepancies and falsehoods by both campaigns throughout the presidential race, even during the Republican primaries.
I don't think it's a race thing, I think it's more of the result of an understanding of the prevalence of low-information voters compounded by the reality of our two-party system. Romney knows that the vast majority of the voters he is trying to connect to aren't ardent watchers of shows that point out his bullshyt, and despite the 24/7 cable news climate that we live in, the fact remains that the average american gets their political news from either their local news or the network evening news programs, which can't really dedicate time to spelling out the contradictions of a campaign as effectively as blogs, political websites, or cable news programs can.
Case in point, Romney holds a speech in the morning where he says "I have never been for X". 4 hours after the speech, his advisers put out a memo saying that Romney did not mean to say he has never been for X, and supports X. The local news channel has a dilemma: they can either run a package that includes video of Romney speaking about X, or do a piece that addresses Romney's comments as well as the contradictory update from the campaign adviser that refutes Romney's comments during the speech. If the memo is released in the late afternoon (which is often the case) there isn't enough time for local news programs to adjust the national politics piece to include that information, and even if there is, time constraints due to how most news programs block out their segments don't allow for the type of detailed explanation to be included.
Add that reality to the fact that Romney knows that the Republican base is going to vote for him no matter what, out of their desire to get Obama out of the White House, and you get a candidate and a campaign that has very little to fear in terms of shifting positions. It's been pretty noticeable that in recent weeks, Romney's embrace of contradictory positions has become not only more flippant, but also more often.
The Obama campaign's hands aren't clean on the issue of stretching the truth either, but no rational person can argue that the press has been more strident in challenging the President on any lies in a more robust manner than Romney, and that's really because the White House press corps has an opportunity to address Jay Carney regarding the President's position on an extremely more regular basis than the Romney campaign addresses the press.
Until voters take a more active interest in following elections on an ongoing level, or we have a viable third-party choice for our elections, this approach of being dishonest for political gain is only going to get much much worse.
Mark my words.
Just my $.02.
