General PolitiFact Scores for all 7 Republican Candidates

[Kregisen]

After the recent Bachmann fiasco, I decided to go to Pulitzer-winning Fact Checker PolitiFact and just see the various candidates scores on their public statements. Here's how they're rated.

I looked over a couple of the ones for Ron that were rated false. One of them was when he said Cain called Ron Paul supporters ignorant, and PolitiFact said this:

Instead of calling Paul backers "ignorant," Cain wrote this: "I get the same stupid question at almost every one of these events. I know it’s a deliberate strategy. How can a person randomly show up at a hundred events and ask the same stupid question to try to nail me on the Federal Reserve? "

And this: "But I’ve got news for the Paulites: It’s not going to work, because the American people are a lot smarter than they are."

"I think a lot of people are calling for this audit of the Federal Reserve because they don’t know enough about it," Cain said, according to their online post. "There’s no hidden secrets going on in the Federal Reserve to my knowledge."

So PolitiFact is correct in that Cain never used the specific word "ignorant", but he basically said the exact same thing. This False should have been a half-truth.


Another one of Paul's few 'Falses' was saying America is Bankrupt. Factchecking that statement is playing semantics. Obviously, the country is not legally bankrupt but it is beyond broke. I just thought a few of their answers were a little off, but for the most part it's very interesting to see the relative differences between candidates in telling truths or not. (particularly Michele Bachmann....the biggest liar in the whole field)

In order of honesty, seems to go as follows: Paul, Romney, Huntsman, Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, Bachmann

 

[randomname]

No shit at Bachmann being dead last. She is a pathological liar.

 

[AlexAmore]

Funny how not too long ago she even referenced politifact saying she was right about something. Bad move sweetheart.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

You are aware that you reproduced everybody's matrix in the OP except Ron Paul?

 

[Elfshadow]

Its on the right hand side Gunny

 

[GunnyFreedom]

Its on the right hand side Gunny

LOL wow, OK, scrolled off of my screen then. Thanks!

 

[Elfshadow]

LOL wow, OK, scrolled off of my screen then. Thanks!

Thats ok its not off my screen and I almost missed that it was there.

 

[bbartlog]

I ran the percentages (true half versus total statements) and doing it that way the top three are Huntsman-Paul-Romney, with Bachmann dead last and Gingrich also pretty far down. I wouldn't necessarily read too much into small differences. It's hard to talk politics off the cuff, day after day, without sometimes talking nonsense just by accident. Thus Romney's position near the top is likely due to a good deal of caution and discipline on his part - usually avoiding outright whoppers - rather than a real dedication to the truth.
The real story thus is not the ordering at the top, but the fact that Bachmann has such a strikingly low score (only 28% of her statements are in the 'true' half). Newt at 42% is also pretty bad.

 

[Rincewind]

Heh. Of the 53 Bachmann statements they've analyzed, 31 are just flat-out false. Not even kinda-sorta-true-if-you-look-at-it-in-a-particular-light, just false.

 

[Rincewind]

I ran the percentages (true half versus total statements) and doing it that way the top three are Huntsman-Paul-Romney, with Bachmann dead last and Gingrich also pretty far down. I wouldn't necessarily read too much into small differences. It's hard to talk politics off the cuff, day after day, without sometimes talking nonsense just by accident. Thus Romney's position near the top is likely due to a good deal of caution and discipline on his part - usually avoiding outright whoppers - rather than a real dedication to the truth.
The real story thus is not the ordering at the top, but the fact that Bachmann has such a strikingly low score (only 28% of her statements are in the 'true' half). Newt at 42% is also pretty bad.

Huntsman has a small sample size, which could explain that, but I haven't seen him say much that I thought was factually questionable.

 

[Aratus]

huntsman hedges and is behind romney. our guy is very honest.
the charts say that bachmann, gingrich + santorum tend to lie...

 

[Aratus]

and "oops" i didn't even
include rick perry with
the second tier threesome

 

[matt0611]

Lol @ Bachmann.

What a liar she is.

 

[Kregisen]

LOL wow, OK, scrolled off of my screen then. Thanks!

What size monitor do you use gunny? Mine is 17" and everything fits without having to scroll to the right...

 

[Kregisen]

Funny how not too long ago she even referenced politifact saying she was right about something. Bad move sweetheart.

LOL the funniest part when I put this picture together was reading some of the statements made. The statement Bachmann made saying that Politifact "said everything I said was true" earned her a Pants on Fire rating LOL.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...e-bachmann-says-politifact-came-out-and-said/

During the Dec. 15, 2011, Republican presidential debate in Sioux City, Iowa, Rep. Michele Bachmann made a claim that jolted us out of our seats.

"After the debates that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything that I said was true," she said.

It came during an exchange between Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Bachmann was attacking Gingrich’s work after he left Congress. He has said he was a paid consultant, but critics such as Bachmann contend he was really a lobbyist.

Gingrich defended his work on behalf of the government-sponsored mortgage-bundling giant Freddie Mac, arguing that government does not necessarily taint whatever enterprise it touches.

He added, "I did no lobbying of any kind for any organization. That was a key part of every agreement we had."

Challenged by moderator Chris Wallace for hard evidence, Bachmann said that "we know that (Gingrich) cashed paychecks from Freddie Mac. That’s the best evidence that you can have. Over $1.6 million. … The speaker had his hand out and he was taking $1.6 million to influence senior Republicans to keep the scam going in Washington, D.C. That’s absolutely wrong. We can’t have as our nominee for the Republican party someone who continues to stand for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They need to be shut down, not built up."

Gingrich responded, "Well, the easiest answer is, that's just not true. What she just said is factually not true. I never lobbied under any circumstance. I never went in and suggested in any way that we do this. In fact, I tried to help defeat the housing act when the Democrats were in charge of the House. And if you go back and talk to former Congressman Rick Lazio, he'll tell you, when we were passing housing reform while I was speaker, I never at any time tried to slow down the reform effort. In fact, I helped him pass the reform bill. And I think some of those people ought to have facts before they make wild allegations."

At that point, Bachmann jumped back in. "Well, after the debates that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything that I said was true. And the evidence is that Speaker Gingrich took $1.6 million. You don't need to be within the technical definition of being a lobbyist to still be influence-peddling with senior Republicans in Washington, D.C., to get them to do your bidding."

Wait... what? We said that "everything" Bachmann had said was true?

Actually, that's not what we said.

At the Dec. 10 debate she was referring to, PolitiFact checked two claims from Bachmann and rated them Mostly True and Pants on Fire.

The fact-check she may have been referencing was, "In 1993, Newt Gingrich ‘first advocated for the individual mandate in health care. And as recently as May of this year, he was still advocating’ for it." We rated that one a Mostly True.

But we also rated her claim that Mitt Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, "put into place socialized medicine." We found that was ridiculously false and rated it Pants on Fire.

Her comment about our ratings was also a bit of a non-sequitur. Neither of the two items we checked addressed the subject at hand -- Gingrich’s work for Freddie Mac, what he thinks of Freddie Mac today, or whether Gingrich was ever a lobbyist.

Maybe Bachmann was simply trying to burnish her image as a truth teller. However, using PolitiFact to back up that assertion is a bit unusual. Her PolitiFact report card shows 59 percent of her statements rated have earned either a False or Pants on Fire. She has earned five Trues, three Mostly Trues, six Half Trues, seven Mostly Falses, 19 Falses and 11 Pants on Fires.

Our ruling

During the Sioux City debate, Bachmann said that "after the debate that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything I said was true." That’s simply not the case. We rated two statements by Bachmann from that debate and ruled one of them Mostly True and the other one Pants on Fire. So for claiming she had a perfect record, she earns another Pants on Fire.

 

[specsaregood]

I looked over a couple of the ones for Ron that were rated false. One of them was when he said Cain called Ron Paul supporters ignorant, and So PolitiFact is correct in that Cain never used the specific word "ignorant", but he basically said the exact same thing. This False should have been a half-truth.

Worth noting: that cain one, wasn't reviewed by their usual fact checkers. they brought in somebody from the Atlanta newspaper to fact check it. Atlanta. where is Cain from?

 

[lakerssuck92]

If we assign numbers True = 5, Mostly True = 4, Half True = 3, Mostly False = 2, False = 1, and Pants on fire = 0 - we can get an average. This is what I got:

Paul 87/28 = 3.1
Huntsman 46/15 = 3.1
Romney 256/88 = 2.9
Santorum 34/13 = 2.6
Perry 276/112 = 2.5
Gingrich 77/39 = 2.0
Bachmann 92/53 = 1.7

This just confirms what we already know - Paul is the most truthful and Bachmann/Gingrich are big fat liars....

 

[GunnyFreedom]

What size monitor do you use gunny? Mine is 17" and everything fits without having to scroll to the right...

Well, at the moment I am on a 13" Macbook Pro. If I were on my desktop with it's ginormous monitor it likely would not have scrolled off the screen.

 

[givemeliberty2010]

Huntsman seems to get first place, actually, on truthfulness--by their standards. Each incidents would have to be looked into, to be sure it wasn't just semantics or something like that.

 

[Eli]

They now have a chart including all of them and are going to issue a press release before the iowa caucus!
woot!