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"FacebookPinterest\n\n Ha. Ha. Ha.: Mitt Romney\u2019s Terrible Laugh, Paul Waldman, The American Prospect\n\nBut what is truly notable is how often Romney has put a lie at the center of his campaign. It\u2019s one thing to say something false in passing, perhaps when speaking extemporaneously. It\u2019s something else to tell a lie, then repeat it again and again on the stump, then put it in a television ad broadcast across the country, then send your surrogates out to repeat it to every camera they can find.As you\u2019ve no doubt seen, few of Romney\u2019s lies concern himself. He may gild a lily here and there about his record and his past, but the overwhelming portion of his deceptions are about Barack Obama\u2014what he has said, what he has done, and what he believes (whenever you hear Romney say, &amp;quot;Barack Obama believes ...&amp;quot; you can be certain he is about to say something ridiculously untrue). The new Romney attack on welfare\u2014falsely claiming that the Obama is eliminating work requirements in the program\u2014is only the latest, but it\u2019s hardly the first. Before that it was &amp;quot;you didn\u2019t build that,&amp;quot; which set a new standard in deceptive use of an out-of-context quote. Before that were a hundred smaller lies about tas, health care, the economy, foreign policy, and nearly every other subject that could possibly come up. One wonders if at some level Romney thinks he hasn\u2019t compromised his integrity if he only makes things up about his opponent.\n\nBeware of the \u2019dog-eared copy\u2019 of Atlas Shrugged on your boyfriend\u2019s bookshelf: Paul Ryan Is Your Annoying LIbertarian Ex-Boyfriend, Ann Friedman, New York Magazine\n\nRyan admits that Ayn Rand\u2019s work was a foundation of his political beliefs. &amp;quot;[T]he reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,&amp;quot; Ryan said in a speech to the Atlas Society in 2005. &amp;quot;And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.&amp;quot; Ryan has since distanced himself from libertarianism, the equivalent of taking the Rand off the shelf, but retains the self-important attitude and disregard for policies based on collective good.\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012\n\nA GQ Primer on Paul Ryan\u2019s Favorite Philosopher, Ayn Rand\n\nToday\u2019s Political Firestorm: Paul Ryan Starts His Veep Campaign\n\nBack in the Day a Voter Could Have Really Gotten to know Harry Truman\n\nFollow us @GQPolitics on Twitter for more updates on the campaign trail"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/hunger-reads-mitts-laugh-as-an-allegory-for-his-campaign-and-paul-ryans-relationship-with-ayn-rand>