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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

More Mitt Malarkey

Romney repeats misleading claims about McCain’s stand on immigration and his own record on taxes.

Republicans Debate in Iowa

More exaggerations and misstatements in the final GOP debate before the Iowa caucuses.

‘Outrageous’ Exaggerations

Republican presidential candidate John McCain cites three absurd-sounding examples of pork-barrel spending in a recent ad. But he appears to have chosen these three because they’re easy to mock, not because he had significant involvement in removing them from the budget.

Sunday Morning Missteps

Summary

The Republican presidential candidates debated – and sounded some more false notes:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney falsely claimed U.S. job growth had been nearly 17 times faster than Europe’s. Actually, European Union employment grew faster than that of the U.S. last year. Romney’s source for the information told FactCheck.org that he himself would no longer use the figures.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused Democratic candidates of "appeasement" toward Islamic terrorists.

Supply-side Spin

John McCain has said that the major tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 have “increased revenues.” He also said that tax cuts in general increase revenues. That’s highly misleading.

Third Time ‘Round for GOP Hopefuls

Pollsters will inform us whether the third time was the charm for any of these candidates in the eyes of potential voters. All we can do is remind you not to believe everything you hear.

Republican Candidates Debate

Summary

Ten Republican candidates for president debated at the Reagan Library in California, the first GOP debate of the 2008 campaign. Here and there we found stumbles, spin and exaggerations, just as we did at the Democratic debate a week earlier.

Giuliani claimed that adoptions shot up 65 to 70 percent while he was mayor. In fact, the net increase over his entire tenure was 17 percent.
Brownback hyped the medical potential of stem cells taken from adults and not embryos,

We’ll Always Have Paris

A Paris Hilton impersonator says it would be “awesome” to repeal the estate tax, while an anti-tax group calls the tax “cruel and unfair.”

A Tortured History

President Bush has declared repeatedly, “we do not torture.” But claims of prisoner abuse continue to surface, Amnesty International has declared the US detention center in Cuba to be “a gulag,” and the administration has yet to deny a news report that it holds scores of suspects in secret CIA prisons overseas.

A Half-true Attack on McCain

The anti-tax Club for Growth runs an ad in New Hampshire claiming McCain would “keep the death tax.” Actually, McCain favors a big reduction.