Mitt Romney lies constantly. It’s really unprecedented in presidential politics, but since the beginning of the campaign, he’s been lying compulsively. And what’s worse, the media regularly lets him get away with it.

Romney has become so brazen that he even lies when the truth is easily verifiable. In an interview on CNBC last night, Romney blatantly lied to defend his campaign’s decision to hide his copious overseas income*:

KUDLOW: Why not release your tax returns? Why not go back 10 years?

Gov. ROMNEY: Well, we’ve had people run for president before, and they’ve released two years. John Kerry released two years of taxes.. I’ve released one already, put the estimate out for the next year. We’ll have two years of taxes..

In fact, John Kerry released not two years of returns, but 20.

Romney obviously knows he’s lying. Either he knows that Kerry released two decades’ worth of tax returns, or at the very least he knows that he has no idea how many returns Kerry released, and he’s just making stuff up on the spot. And surely he knows that folks like ThinkProgress are watching. But he doesn’t even care.

That’s not a campaign strategy — it’s a pathology.

*At least, we can only assume Romney’s returns would show massive amounts of overseas income that he paid no US taxes on. Why else would he be going to so much trouble to conceal those returns?

The conservative faction of the Supreme Court has regularly struck down campaign finance laws, declaring that political spending is “free speech” that cannot be regulated. Their rulings, culminating with the outrageous 2010 Citizens United case, have remade our political landscape into yet one more arena of American life in which the rich are given special powers and privileges. Here’s the result:

An anonymous donor gave $10 million late last year to run ads attacking President Obama and Democratic policies, escalating the money race that is defining the 2012 presidential campaign. And in the new, free-wheeling environment of independent political giving, the identity of this donor, like many others, is likely to remain a permanent mystery. [Washington Post, via Political Wire]

A single person will be responsible for hundreds of hours of anti-Obama ads. Even worse, that person won’t even have to reveal their name. You see, if you donate $100, it’s very important that your contribution be reported. But if you donate millions, you no longer have to be accountable for that donation.

The rich are different from you and me. They don’t have to be held accountable. It’s simply assumed that they’re virtuous. After all, they’re rich — and our politicians have been telling us for years that we need to deify the rich as sacred “job creators.”

Apparently, we’re not at all concerned about the blatant purchasing of power in Washington. In fact, we’ve settled into a nice little cycle — as the rich get richer, they purchase even more influence in Washington, convincing lawmakers to pass laws that make them even richer, which they use to purchase further influence. Now that the Supreme Court is also working to enrich the already-rich, the cycle is moving even faster, and nobody seems at all concerned about the impacts this is having on our society.

Mitt Romney is building his presidential campaign on an unending string of bald-faced lies. He has been lying freely — even compulsively — throughout the campaign. His campaign has defended and even celebrated his lies. And the media has given him a pass, blithely reprinting his clearly intentional lies.

Yet yesterday, an unperturbed Romney lamented the lack of “quality control” in the media:

Frankly, in some of the new media, I find myself missing the presence of editors to exercise quality control.  I miss the days of two or more sources for a story – when at least one source was actually named.

You know, the sort of “quality control” that would have more media outlets calling Romney out for his outrageous lies.

Romney then went on to tell a massive lie, accusing Barack Obama of trying to “end Medicare as we know it:”

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Barack Obama showed yesterday that he’ll be drawing strong contrasts between his budget proposal and the Romney/Ryan plan. To that end, the White House released an infographic yesterday showing just what you could buy with Paul Ryan’s proposed tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. Suffice it to say that it’s clear who’s looking out for the middle class.

This CNN poll sounds like fantastic news, if you believe it:

If the general election were held today instead of in early November, 54% of registered voters say they would back Obama, with 43% supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the front-runner in the GOP nomination battle. That’s up from a five-point 51%-46% advantage the president held over Romney in February….

“President Obama currently wins majority support among groups that have been problematic for him in the past, including men, older voters, and suburbanites,” says CNN Poling Director Keating Holland.

You’ll have to excuse me for being a party-pooper, but I don’t buy it. Is it more likely that in the past month — during which nothing earth-shattering happened — Barack Obama suddenly made enormous progress with a number of groups that typically vote Republican, or that the bounce is a product of sampling error?

Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing results like this. And, of course, even if the results are partially due to sampling error, they should make Team Romney very afraid. But let’s not get overly confident. The election in November is going to be a lot closer than this CNN poll.

I’ve written a few times that despite Republicans’ most fervent wishes, the 2012 Republican primary has little in common with the 2008 Democratic primary that helped shape Barack Obama as a candidate. As the 2012 primary slogs on, though, one similarly has emerged — a string of minor victories for the runner-up that manage to prolong the primary.

In 2008, Barack Obama proved unable to win primaries in the largest states, such as Texas and Pennsylvania. In 2012, Mitt Romney has proved unable to win in conservative southern states, such as Louisiana, where Rick Santorum won this weekend’s primary.

Just like in 2008, Romney’s defeats are practically meaningless. Mathematically, Romney is on track to become the nominee despite Santorum’s occasional wins. What’s more, his losses have no predictive power for the general election. So Romney’s couldn’t win in Louisiana. Does anyone believe that means the state will vote or Obama in the general election? That’s just as unlikely as Pennsylvania voting for McCain in 2008.

The simple truth is that the primary is over, and Mitt Romney is the winner. But because of Santorum’s occasional victories, Romney can’t seem to bring everyone else around to that conclusion. This is something he desperately needs to do, because the primary has done enormous damage to his campaign.

How long will it be before Romney finally manages to put the primary to rest for good? Romney had better hope he wraps things up quicker than Obama did — especially since his opponent is so much weaker.

What happens when an impotent force meets an unstable object? That’s what we’re going to be seeing this fall as both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney attempt to make a difficult argument to the American people.

For the last few years, the consensus was the Barack Obama would have a tough sell this November: He has to convince the American people that while the economy is still in rough shape, it would be even worse without his intervention. While I believe that’s true, it’s undoubtedly a pretty tough message to sell successfully.

What nobody expected was the situation we find ourselves in now: A slow but steady improvement in the economy in the year before Obama’s re-election campaign. Since the economy was depressed for so long — and is still recovering rather slowly — it doesn’t really eliminate Obama’s tough argument. But it creates an equally tough argument for his opponent: Sure, the economy’s improving, but it would be improving faster if someone other than Obama were in charge.

Suddenly, Mitt Romney has to make just a much of a stretch as Barack Obama does in November. With both of them forced into making equally weak arguments, Obama’s presumed disadvantages disappear. Obama may be a weak incumbent, but he has the good fortune to have an equally-weak challenger.

Ezra Klein had a great chart yesterday comparing Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s tax plans:

We already knew what the chart shows, but it illustrates the point powerfully: Obama will increase taxes on the 1 percent, while Romney is a shill for the richest of the rich. Taxes for the very rich haven’t been so low — and their share of income hasn’t been so high — since the 1920s. It’s common sense to reverse that trend, and it’s insane that Romney wants to exacerbate it even further.

To me, the worst part about Romney’s plan is that it increases taxes on the very poor. What a sick, twisted reverse-Robin Hood scheme. For Romney, though, I suppose it just represents a continuation of his career. He’s spent his whole life enriching himself and other multi-millionaires by exploiting the working class.