To the Editor:

I noticed that last week some of Mitt Romney’s defenders tried to claim that the video from the May fundraising event was “deceptively edited” to make it look like Romney demeaned 47 percent of the electorate.

I find this a very amusing defense considering the ads run by the Romney campaign and supporting Super PACs. Apparently no amount of “deceptive editing” of Obama statements is too egregious for them to try to use against Obama. I guess the Romney camp assumes that if they do it all the time, everyone else does too.

Several fact checking sources have documented numerous lies created by deceptive editing in campaign ads, stump speeches and statements to the press, but they keep repeating the lies anyway. One staff member even said they were not going to let fact checkers dictate the campaign.

Let me suggest two more plausible statements supporters could use in defense of that May speech. One might say, “You can’t believe any other thing Romney has said in this campaign. Why would you think that what he said about 47 percent of the voters was true either?’’  

Or another response might be, “You should know by now that Romney says whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. Why do you think those remarks at that fundraiser were any different? After all, he is now telling audiences in public speeches that he is for the 100 percent.”

I guess the wonderful editing technology available today has made the ninth commandment obsolete for today’s politics. Thank goodness for video tape archives.

Jane Harrison

Waynesville