Summary
Claims, facts and figures flew at the second GOP presidential debate of 2008. Not all were true. For example:
Mitt Romney claimed he didn’t raise taxes when he was governor of Massachusetts, failing to note that he increased government fees by hundreds of millions of dollars and shifted some of the state tax burden to the local level.
Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado claimed scientific reports on whether humans are responsible for global warming are split 50-50,
Summary
In an earlier article we criticized Rudy Giuliani for saying adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent when he was mayor, when in fact adoptions at the end of his tenure were only 17 percent higher than at the start, and falling. His campaign still insists his claim is justified and offers its own interpretation of the statistical record.
In this article we offer the former mayor’s rationale, along with why we believe it is a classic case of how candidates and public officials sometimes use data selectively to create a false impression.
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,
Summary
Eight Democratic candidates debated in South Carolina. We found some minor stumbles.
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, explaining his call to show compassion for Palestinians, put a spin on the remark that differs from the way it was originally reported by an Iowa newspaper.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York said the Virginia Tech killer had been ruled a threat "to others" and involuntarily committed because of his mental state. Neither is true.
Democrats oversell their Medicare prescription drug bill, falsely claiming it will bring big price cuts for medication. Republicans have been equally misleading.
Voters in Tennessee, Missouri and Virginia – three states where polls have shown the Senate candidates to be neck-and-neck – have been particularly swamped with ads.
The mid-term elections of 2006 brought an unprecedented barrage of advertising containing much that is false or misleading.
In half a dozen ads, Democrats accuse a number of GOP House incumbents of voting repeatedly to “raid the Social Security Trust Fund.” That line was bunk when Republicans used it against Democratic candidates in the past, and it’s bunk now.
Former President Bill Clinton says California’s Proposition 87 will help “save the planet” and Al Gore says it’s the one thing the state can do to “free us from foreign oil.” Both sides are overselling.
The pro-Bush group Progress for America is running a TV ad appealing directly to Americans’ fear of terrorists, saying bluntly “These people want to kill us.”