On this Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, former Bush-Cheney stategist Matthew Dowd did his best to give a little cover to Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign based on an endless string of perpetual lies by playing the 'both sides" are equally terrible game.

Sadly this is the type of false equivalency we see day in and day out from the talking heads in the media, but one of the more ridiculous ones. Since when is Romney refusing to release his tax returns the equivalent President Obama supposedly not saying we're going to have to have some "shared sacrifice" when it comes to balancing our budget?

First of all, it's not even true. Unfortunately President Obama has shown more than a willingness to make a deal with Republicans, much to the ire of much of his base, and cut some sort of "grand bargain." The side which has said they refuse to budge and raise a penny in taxes has been the Republicans. Sadly I think this was an exercise in these Villagers just dying for more austerity when our country cannot afford it and insisting on balancing the budget as an excuse to destroy our social safety nets, because Republicans have always hated them since the day any of them were enacted -- as much as it was trying to muddy the waters on Romney's lies. They want the New Deal dismantled so badly, they can taste it.

Republicans never cared one iota about the deficit when their hero George was blowing huge holes in it with his tax cuts and a couple of wars he left off the books. But now what a Democrat is back in office they're all screaming to the hills about how we're "broke."

And you've just gotta' love George Stephanopoulos here saying it's not a debate moderator's job to fact-check the people debating. Sadly that's the status quo these days, but it shouldn't be.

Transcript below the fold.