You didn't build that! Discussion questions

Just as Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet, Barak Obama never claimed that business owners didn't build their own businesses. But do Republicans care? Of course not. For the last several days they've been cheerfully repeating the misquote, stripped off all context. There is no reason to expect them to stop.

Here's honest Mormon Mitt Romney preaching the fib at a campaign stop in Ohio yesterday:

I know that you recognize a lot of people help you in a business. Perhaps the banks, the investors. There’s no question your mom and dad, your school teachers, the people that provide roads, the fire, the police. A lot of people help. But let me ask you this, did you build your business? If you did, raise your hand. Take that, Mr. President.

As I've already pointed out this interpretation of the President's words ignores the sentences he spoke before and after the notorious line, sentences that make it clear that he was referring to the public infrastructure business owners did not build themselves. He never suggested that business owners hadn't built their own businesses.


Questions for discussion:

(1) Why are Republicans such shameless liars?
(2) Why are Republican voters too lazy to check the source material?
(3) Why are they too stupid to successfully interpret the source material?
(4) Why do they fall for pathetic tricks such as this over, and over and over again?
(5) And, if it works so well, why don't Democratic politician play the same game? Is it because Democratic voters aren't morons?

Search for more information about GOP dirty tricks at4torah.com