The best liar in the field

It is a fact universally acknowledged that Romney crushed the opposition in the last debate -- in fact in all the debates so far.  That's because he has facts and data at his fingertips, along with a bottomless willingness to twist them in support of current GOP nostrums. The others don't call him on his distortions, because they support the same policies he's advocating -- no new taxes, no bailouts, repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, gut regulations.  And they don't call him out when he creates false contrasts between his own past actions and Obama's, because doing so would imply that there's some virtue in Obama's policies.

The upshot is that Romney is free to propose impossible unions of his past pragmatism -- compromising with Massachusetts Democrats, supporting the TARP bailouts, designing subsidized health insurance exchanges -- with his current extremist positions. Here's how three of those unions played out in the last debate.