Throughout the election cycle, liberals have been shocked at just how “shameless,” as Kevin Drum put it this week, Mitt Romney’s campaign has been. It’s not just that Romney lies; it’s the quality of the lies, the indifference to any fact-checking, the insistence on continuing to use a lie long after it’s been definitively debunked.

I have a name for it, and an explanation. Call it lazy mendacity.

First, some examples are in order. Perhaps the most famous one is the Republican insistence that Barack Obama rejected the idea of “American exceptionalism” in a press conference – an interpretation that depended on yanking a quotation out of context. Bad enough to do it, but years later it’s not at all unusual to come across examples of Republicans still trotting out this one.