Republicans have a core problem, and Michael Tomasky brilliantly uncovered it. They have to lie, he says, because the truth is that they don’t care about people like us. They know their policies won’t work for us but if they convince us they will, we will let them keep on feeding on us.

Tomasky begins by saying you couldn’t write a novel where someone like Romney picks as his running mate someone like Ryan, who comes from a prominent family in the road construction business that made most of its money from government contracts.

A fiction editor would say, “Come on, Tomasky, this is just too heavy-handed.”

It’s tricky business to trick us. You have to lie.

Especially if the same candidate and his running mate were attacking the other guy with a lie that specifically distorted what he’d said about, of all things, roads and bridges! (“You didn’t build that.”) Grandpappy Ryan did exactly what Obama says other people did to help small businesses thrive. He built the roads. And he was paid to do so by government road contracts. Forget fiction. That’s even too pat for Hollywood.

Even George W. Bush needed help from strategist Paul O’Neill with his talking points, running as he was, on the same trickle-down voodoo economics that failed to win re-election for his father, George H.W. Bush. It’s tricky business to trick us. You have to parse your words carefully. Or to put it another way, you have to lie.

…“The public prefers spending on things like health care and education over cutting taxes. It’s crucial that your remarks make clear that there is no trade-off here.”

Put more bluntly, what O’Neill was saying here is: You have to lie. By definition, you have to lie. You can’t tell people that tax-cutting will result in less money for these programs, which is the truth, so you/we Republicans have to invent a fiction of no trade-offs, of a free market that can deliver everything. What Bush delivered to us was essentially no net job growth in eight years and the worst crisis in 80.

So the Ryan-Romney ticket, as it should properly be called, has to say things like “we want government to do the things it does well.” Romney has to say things like he said on TV this morning, “No one is talking about deregulating Wall Street,” when in fact he is talking about exactly that. Because they can’t tell the truth and hope to get elected.

And the truth, Tomasky says is…Let’s just say, really raw. Read his article and see for yourself.