Untruths, Falsehoods And Outright Lies

If there's one thing politicians know how to do, it's lie with a straight face. I suspect it's always been this way because there's a lot of money to be made by those in power. But it seems like in the recent past the lies have become more numerous and more outrageous. To counter this, a website was created that had no purpose other than to check on the veracity of what politicians are saying -- especially the most outrageous statements.

That website is PolitiFact, and they have done a very good job of sniffing out the lies being told by politicians of both parties. And yes, they have found outright lies being told by members of both political parties. When they check a political statement, they give it one of six ratings -- True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True, False, and Pants On Fire. Of course, the categories no one wants to have their statement rated as are False and Pants On Fire, because that means you just told a big fat lie.

In the last year, the Republicans are winning the contest for biggest liars hands down. About 38.74% of the Republican statements checked turned out to be untrue, while only 12.29% of Democratic statements were untrue (which is still too many). This has many right-wingers upset, and they charge that PolitiFact checks more Republican statements than Democratic ones. Actually, the statements checked on both parties were nearly the same -- 191 for Republicans and 179 for Democrats.

The Democrats also won on statements that were rated either True or Mostly True. Democrats scored about 42.46% of their statements in these categories while Republicans only had 31.41%. Here are the numbers for all categories in 2010:

PANTS ON FIRE
Democrats...............4 (2.2%)
Republicans...............23 (12.0%)

FALSE
Democrats...............18 (10.1%)
Republicans...............51 (26.7%)

BARELY TRUE
Democrats...............22 (12.3%)
Republicans...............27 (14.1%)

HALF TRUE
Democrats...............59 (33.0%)
Republicans...............30 (15.7%)

MOSTLY TRUE
Democrats...............48 (26.8%)
Republicans...............31 (16.2%)

TRUE
Democrats...............28 (15.6%)
Republicans...............29 (15.2%)

Why are the Republicans so much worse about telling lies these days? I think it's due to the new crop of teabagger politicians. These people just say what they know their followers want to hear, and they know if their lie is exposed, their followers will just blame the media for being unfair and continue to believe. Why should they worry about the truth when their followers don't?

The biggest liar in the last year was Sarah Palin, who was caught telling falsehoods at least eight times. Michele Bachmann was second with being caught telling seven lies. John Boehner and Mike Pence tied for third place with four lies apiece. Of course, this doesn't cover all their lies -- just the ones they were caught on.

While both political parties get caught playing fast and loose with the truth every now and then, the Republicans (especially their teabagger base) is getting very adept at lying. They have elevated the art of political lies to new and soaring heights. And they don't seem to care. It has become obvious that honesty is no longer a Republican value (if it ever was).