Politifact’s Lie of the Year contest had a lot of contenders this year, and many of them were uttered by Mendacious Mitt Romney — including the winner: Lie of the Year: The Romney Campaign’s Ad on Jeeps Made in China.

It was a lie told in the critical state of Ohio in the final days of a close campaign — that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China. It originated with a conservative blogger, who twisted an accurate news story into a falsehood. Then it picked up steam when the Drudge Report ran with it. Even though Jeep’s parent company gave a quick and clear denial, Mitt Romney repeated it and his campaign turned it into a TV ad.

And they stood by the claim, even as the media and the public expressed collective outrage against something so obviously false.

People often say that politicians don’t pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election.

PolitiFact has selected Romney’s claim that Barack Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China” at the cost of American jobs as the 2012 Lie of the Year.

I would have chosen the Romney campaign’s lie about the President’s “you didn’t build that” statement, because by omitting all the words before and after that deceptive catchphrase they actually convinced a lot of people that Obama was bashing small business owners — when in reality he was praising the American system that enables small business owners to succeed. That Big Lie was much more effective as propaganda than the “Jeeps in China” howler, which was thoroughly debunked almost immediately.

According to a witness to Steven Crowder’s nasty little stunt at the Michigan protest yesterday, he was provoking and insulting demonstrators, deliberately trying to goad them into violence.

Knowing how the Fox News/Breitbart gang love to stage these kinds of fake incidents to picture their targets as violent thugs, it was already pretty obvious. But now a witness has confirmed it.

Ken Spitzley, a state agriculture department employee, told HuffPost that he walked to the protest at the state Capitol during a break from work and that he witnessed Crowder getting in protesters’ faces and goading them.

“He was just after everybody,” said the 56-year-old Spitzley, a procurement technician whose workplace is represented by the United Auto Workers. “There was no question he was there just to start a fight, to start some kind of trouble.”

According to Spitzley, Crowder had an exchange with two pro-union men wearing blue jeans, hard hats and Carhartt clothing. One of them asked Crowder what he did for a living, according to Spitzley.

“He said, ‘I sell soap. I should sell you some,’” Spitzley said, quoting Crowder.

Spitzley said he did not witness the punching incident or the exchange leading up to it. But in Spitzley’s estimation, Crowder “wasn’t going to go home until he got punched.”

Crowder has staged similar stunts before, as Adam Shriver points out here: Fox News Steven Crowder & Americans for Prosperity Use Breitbart-Style Film Editing to Show “Union Thug Brutality”.

When BlogCon (a conservative blogging conference) was held in Denver, Crowder and a group of angry right-wingers surrounded Occupy Denver protesters and screamed at them. Crowder later claimed he was “assaulted” while part of a large, screaming mob surrounding five people. Here are the relevant videos:

Crowder getting in someone’s face:

Youtube Video

Crowder apparently pushing a lady from behind, then acting like she attacked him (see especially after the 3 minute mark):

Youtube Video

He then claimed she “assaulted” him:

Youtube Video

Crowder going on Fox News to whine about how “violent” occupy Denver was:

Youtube Video

It’s almost as if they do the same thing every time. Huh.

Quentin Tarantino’s new film “Django Unchained” is a story about an escaped slave who takes revenge on Southern slave owners, and unsurprisingly for a film about slavery and racism, it contains numerous uses of the “N-word.”

Right wing news aggregator Matt Drudge knows an opportunity when he sees one:

Image: ZZ1FF0FE39.jpg

So, useless right wing pseudo-comedian Steven Crowder waded into the demonstration outside the Michigan Capitol yesterday, and started goading the already pissed off union members who had just seen their livelihood stripped away by a dishonest bunch of Republican 1 percenters, spewing anti-union talking points at them and trying to get someone to take a swing at him.

To no one’s surprise, Crowder got what he wanted, and of course he had someone there to record it all: Steven Crowder, Fox News Contributor, Punched During Right-to-Work Protests.

And it was coordinated with Fox News, for maximum propaganda effect:

Vid will be be up by 3:15 with more exclusive footage released on @seanhannity later. You’ve never seen anything like it, trust me.

— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) December 11, 2012

Naturally, the entire right wing blogosphere is shrieking in unison about “violent union thugs” today. I have to say, this wingnut stunt did take an enormous amount of … what do you call it? Bravery? No. Stupidity? Not exactly. Balls? Not really.

He’s lucky he got out of the crowd alive. I absolutely do not condone the union member who punched Crowder in the face, if it really was a union member. But in the words of Chris Rock, I understand.

Related:
Video: Steven Crowder’s Racist Rap at CPAC

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