The four remaining candidates debated once again, this time in Tampa, Florida — where facts took a beating.
Mitt Romney falsely claimed the Navy is smaller now than at any time since the start of World War I. (It had fewer ships as recently as four years ago.) And Newt Gingrich again claimed credit for balancing federal budgets that were voted on after he left the House.
The event was sponsored in part by NBC News,
Facts were sometimes used as blunt instruments as the four remaining GOP presidential candidates hammered away at each other in the last debate before Saturday’s South Carolina primary. Santorum and Romney tangled …
Newt Gingrich claims that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” He’s wrong. More were added under Bush than under Obama, according to the most recent figures.
The former speaker made that claim Jan. 16 in a Republican debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and his campaign organization quickly inserted the snippet in a new 30-second TV ad that began running Jan. 18 in South Carolina.
Gingrich would have been correct to say the number now on food aid is historically high.
In a spirited debate, Republican candidates variously strained the facts on President Obama’s record on trade, tangled with each other over a misleading ad about allowing felons to vote, and erred on the history of the federal income tax.
Otherwise, the five remaining GOP presidential candidates pretty much stuck to the facts as they debated Jan. 16 at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The event was sponsored by Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.
OK, we get the joke. But there’s a problem with the satirical TV spot that the Stephen Colbert “super PAC” is running against Mitt Romney in South Carolina. Romney didn’t bump off the companies that the ad jokingly claims he did.
For those who haven’t been watching the Comedy Central star’s show lately, Colbert (a South Carolina native) says he’s decided to run for president — in South Carolina only. The “super PAC” he formed previously has now been turned over to fellow Comedy Central comedian Jon Stewart,
Truth took a punch or two at the first of two GOP debates before New Hampshire’s critical presidential primary. Romney, talking about taxes, said federal, state and local government consume 37 percent of the economy today compared with only 27 percent when John F. Kennedy was president. In fact …
Update: As of Jan. 1, our total stood at $83,607. We will be processing additional late-arriving paper checks in the days to come, and will update again in a few days when we make our regular quarterly financial report.
Thanks to all who made year-end donations. Your gifts will make it possible for us to do more to hold politicians accountable in 2012.
-0-
This promises to be an exciting election year and we here at FactCheck.org have been doing a lot to prepare for it.
Despite what you may have heard in 2011: The new health care law won’t cost many jobs (and they’ll be poorly paying jobs at that). Republicans aren’t proposing to “end” Medicare (and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has signed onto a modified version …
The final Republican presidential debate in advance of the Jan. 3 first-in-the-nation Iowa party caucuses produced a few claims we found worthy of quibbling over. Gingrich challenged Bachmann’s factual accuracy regarding the former speaker’s record on abortion — but we found Bachmann was mostly correct. On the other hand, Bachmann used an inflated jobs figure when she criticized Obama’s decision to delay approval of a Canadian oil pipeline through the U.S.
Seven Republican presidential candidates debated Dec.
False and misleading claims were flying again at the latest Republican presidential candidates’ debate in Iowa. Romney falsely claimed that no president before Obama had cut Medicare, and that Obama favored pre-1967 borders for Israel. Gingrich said he opposed cap-and-trade, even though …