Mitt Romney is a little unclear on the facts when it comes to FactCheck.org — and what we and other fact-checkers have said about Rick Santorum.
In the same CNN interview in which he made a somewhat premature claim that Santorum was at the “desperate end” of his campaign (just before returns came in showing Santorum had won and Romney had come in third in both the Alabama and Mississippi primaries), he said:
Romney, March 13: Well,
Can the “Lie of the Year” still be used to defeat Republicans? Democrats hope so, and a super PAC is using an Iowa congressional race to retest the claim that House Republicans voted to “end Medicare.” But we find the Iowa ads to be little improved from last year, when …
Rick Santorum misrepresented what John F. Kennedy said in 1960 about church-state separation. According to Santorum, Kennedy said that religious people could “have no role in the public square” and “should not be permitted . . . to influence public policy.” But Kennedy didn’t say those things. He said he wouldn’t take orders from the Vatican if elected president.
On ABC’s “This Week,” the former Pennsylvania senator said Feb. 26 that Kennedy’s embrace of an “absolute”
The four remaining GOP presidential candidates met in Mesa, Ariz., for another debate, and mauled a few facts. Rick Santorum claimed earmarks were done in an “open” process during his time in Congress. Mitt Romney said dispensing morning-after pills to rape victims was “entirely voluntary” for Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts. Newt Gingrich kept on claiming he balanced federal budgets that Congress approved after he resigned.
The debate was carried live by CNN on Feb. 22, and this time the candidates were seated.
Mitt Romney says, “If you want a fiscal conservative, you can’t vote for Rick Santorum, because he’s not.” Really? Three fiscally conservative groups rate Santorum’s lifetime voting record as better than most other Republican lawmakers, and one of them considers him a “Taxpayer Hero.”
Romney is on paper-thin ice with his new line of attack against his surging rival.
Santorum is a “hero” to the anti-pork Citizens Against Government Waste — which gives him a lifetime voting record better than three-fourths of the senators with whom he served in his final year in Congress.
It didn’t take long after President Obama released his latest budget for the oil lobby to pick up the misleading cry that it’s being targeted for “new taxes.” That’s mostly not true. Energy Tomorrow, a project of the American Petroleum Institute, ran a print ad in Washington, D.C.’s Politico Feb. 14 asking, “Guess who’ll pay for new energy taxes?”
The problem with that rhetorical question is that most of the “new taxes” are actually a proposed end to some old tax breaks —
The wind-power lobby is spinning the facts in a $1.4-million TV ad campaign aimed at extending a lucrative tax break worth billions to the industry. Its ads claim that Congress is “threatening new taxes” targeting wind power, which isn’t true. No “new taxes” are envisioned. Instead, Congress is …
Q: How much has the federal debt gone up under Obama?
A: During his first three years in office, it rose $4.7 trillion, an increase of 45 percent. Partisan graphics circulating via email and Facebook are both incorrect.
Now comes the counterattack.
After weeks of taking it on the chin in Florida without throwing a punch, the Gingrich side has finally begun to fight back with TV attack ads of its own.
Among the new ads is one from a pro-Gingrich super PAC that takes the personal attacks to a new level, suggesting Romney was associated personally with “illegal activity” in a massive Medicare fraud in the 1990s. The fact is Romney was never accused of wrongdoing in that case.
Newt Gingrich falsely claimed he never favored a federal mandate requiring individuals to have health insurance.
Romney repeated a false accusation that President Obama failed to denounce Hamas rocket attacks in a speech to the United Nations. And Santorum insisted that Muslim terrorists are seeking missile bases in Cuba — a wild claim based most likely on mistranslations of an Italian newspaper report.
These were among the factual fouls that we noted as four GOP presidential candidates met for yet another debate.