Fanciful ‘Facts’ At Fox News Debate

The fiction from the Republican candidates debate in Orlando.

Summary
 

Nine Republican presidential candidates debated for two hours in Orlando, Fla., and they served up more exaggerations and falsehoods — about Obama, each other, and even Thomas Jefferson.

• Perry claimed Romney supports Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative. In fact, while Romney has praised some of the program’s goals, he said those kinds of issues ought to be handled at the state level, not federal.
• Romney falsely accused Obama of saying “nothing about the Palestinians launching rockets into Israel” during a 2009 speech to the United Nations. In fact, Obama said those who suffer include “the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night.”
• Perry falsely claimed Romney had once written that “Romneycare” is “exactly what the American people needed.” Romney never wrote that. On the contrary, he said after he signed the bill that “certain aspects” of the state’s law might work “better in some states than others.”
• Bachmann quoted Thomas Jefferson in defense of her previous assertion that separation of church and state is a “myth.” But the 1802 letter she cited is the very one in which Jefferson said the First Amendment erects “a wall of separation between Church and State.”
• Perry said the U.S.-Mexico border needs more “boots on the ground” to stop illegal immigration, and claimed that “the federal government has not engaged in this at all.” In fact, the number of border security agents has more than doubled over the last decade.
• Cain said the EPA has “gone wild” and will regulate “dust” as of Jan. 1. But there’s no new dust regulation set to go into effect on that day, and EPA says it has no plans for one.

And we found other factual problems as well. Former New Mexico Gov. Johnson claimed the government is borrowing 43 cents of every dollar spent. It’s really 37 cents. Bachmann denied suggesting HPV vaccine can cause mental retardation or is “potentially dangerous.” And Cain even resurrected the old “death panel” falsehood about the new health care law, claiming he would be “dead under Obamacare” because “bureaucrats” would somehow have delayed diagnosis and treatment of the cancer he fought in 2006.

Read more