Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: The Unadmitted Majority

NOTE:  About a week after this "Mostly True" ruling was published, PolitiFact revised it to Half True:  "After it appeared, we heard from many readers who argued that our rating of Mostly True was the wrong call....Upon further discussion, and bolstered by more reporting, we have decided to change this ruling to Half True."

The last time I ran with a PolitiFact ruling that Rachel Maddow had “graded” as perhaps conservatively biased for purposes of Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style, I caught a bit of flack. It had to do with the context of the statement and perhaps the implied intentions of the statement-maker (in that case, Obama). I thought I had better check such statements a bit more carefully in the future instead of trusting Maddow; however, we now have another Maddow fact-check of the fact checkers with a lot more to it than just the statement.

I often try to note when my conservative counterpart covers these, whether in one of his blogs or in Facebook commentary, because when the bias goes the other way he tends to ignore them. In this case, however, he was all over on this one, and it gave me a fine way to showcase his dishonesty, particularly in the area of “selection bias.”

Republican Florida senator Marco Rubio made the fact-checked statement in a speech he gave at the 2012 CPAC conference. He actually said it twice, that “this” is a movement of conservatives, or what I call the majority of Americans…” and then after a few words about “how he knew” because “liberals” never admit they’re liberals and instead using the term “progressives” he said “The majority of Americans are conservatives — they believe in things like the Constitution. I know that’s weird to some people…”

PolitiFact (PF) Florida obviously concentrated on the first statement. If they had concentrated on the re-affirmation, they would have had to deal with the caveat that it’s (only) conservatives who believe in things like the Constitution, which would make that statement blatantly false, or a lot less than Mostly True.

PolitiFact Florida used a twenty-year Gallup Poll to “support” Rubio’s claim:

For 2011, Gallup found that the largest group of Americans identify as conservative, at 40 percent. Another 35 percent identify as moderate, while 21 percent identify as liberal.

That means a plurality of Americans identify as conservative, not a majority. Then PF writer Angie Drobnic-Holan compares this to the Democrat/Republican/Independent labels, where an equal 40 percent plurality are self-indentified as Independent. Ultimately she finds that no matter how you shake it, no matter how charitable she is with the statistics, the majority is not conservative. But because conservatives and those who “lean Republican” are higher than everyone else, this justifies a ruling of Mostly True.

My conservative counterpart does his usual routine of reading into the statement and authoritatively reaching his own conclusions:

So, was Rubio correct that the majority of Americans are conservative? That depends on his argument. Rubio didn't cite surveys about self-identification. He used a method concerned with attitudes toward the respective labels. One can argue with the method or the application of the method, but using an inappropriate benchmark doesn't cut it.

Just because Rubio “used a method concerned with attitudes” doesn’t mean he was correct. In fact, Rubio’s explanation that liberals never admit they’re liberals doesn’t cut it either. If a person won’t admit they are liberal, they are still NOT conservative. There is no way to measure whether the majority of Americans are conservative by basically backing it with an anecdotal observation that liberals won’t admit they’re liberal—some other method must be employed. Bryan White uses this “attitudes” measure as a way to excuse Rubio’s point and find fault with PolitiFact’s efforts to determine whether the majority of Americans are conservative.

As usual, this provides a way for Bryan White to assert his superiority to those who disagree with him, a calculated way to set up an argument from authority:

Maddow is supposed to be ultra smart. So how come she can't figure out that Rubio's statement isn't properly measured against self-identification numbers?

(Translated: Bryan White is even more than ultra smart?). We never find out what the proper measurement is, because there is no quantifying method when “attitudes” is used.  There is no way to verify such "context." The most accurate and reasonable would be self-identification polls. Again, Rubio made the statement twice, the second time, without the “how come” that Bryan latched onto. In other words, Bryan’s complaint is sheer over-reach along with a bit of equivocation.

In the Facebook PolitiFact page comments, a poster by the name of Brian Varley made the best case as to Rubio’s statement being far less than Mostly True, by many, many different measures, in this case, widespread support for public programs and social issues which conservatives are by policy against:

…I checked out a variety of recent polls and they are not showing a Conservative America ... these polls are showing a majority support, in some cases overwhelming support, for issues like gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, government promoting and assisting solar energy as an industry, increased dollars toward our schools and education, the occupy Wallstreet, and, yes, even universal healthcare (I looked back to 2005 on this one and there has been as much as 70%+ support for Universal Healthcare) ... In some polls as much as 8 out of 10 Americans support these, dare I say, Liberal to Moderate issues!!!

May 22, 2011 – A recent Gallup poll shows 53 percent of Americans support making gay marriage legal, Reuters reports. ... Is that the conservative America Rubio is eluding to????

Oct 19, 2011 – National Journal's latest survey also shows broad public backing for Democrats plan to raise taxes on millionaires. Is that the conservative America Rubio is talking about???

Feb 1, 2012 – Pointing to a recent Gallup poll that showed, for the first time, a majority of Americans in support of marijuana legalization... Is that the conservative America Rubio believes exists????

Poll: Most Americans Support Occupy Wall Street, By Matthew Cooper, Oct 19 2011, 9:22 AM ET - "National Journal's latest survey shows broad support for the protest movement and Democrats' plan to make the rich pay more ... Some 59 percent of adults either completely agree or mostly agree with the protesters, while 31 percent mostly disagree or completely disagree; 10 percent of those surveyed didn't know or refused to answer." Well, that must be the conservative Americ Rubio says is the majority????

A Pew Report, July 16, 2010 shows clearly that 58% of American voters are Moderate to Liberal. In brief, Independents being 40% of the voters, Democrats 31%, and Republicans at 27% ... Among independents, 48% describe their views as moderate while 33% say they are conservative and 17% are liberal.

While the above clearly shows the majority of Americans are not conservative by far, Bryan White insists “ PolitiFact probably used the correct rating on its "Truth-O-Meter," though its methodology and Bill Adair's public response are certainly worthy of criticism.” Probably? More equivocation. But I’m not done with Bryan on this one. His blogs’ biggest complaints about PolitiFact is its use of “selection bias” as a black-on-white perjorative that the selection must be with a liberal bias because all journalists must be liberal. Both he and his fellow partner in crime Jeff Dyberg say their evidence are a few anecdotal examples where (they believe) PolitiFact deliberately only chooses statements where the ruling would ultimately favor Democrats/Liberals and ignoring others “in the vast ocean of statements” they could evaluate for Republicans.

This entire speech by Rubio, however, abounded with falsities that PolitiFact could have fact-checked, as pointed out by Jonathan Bernstein in an article about this ruling:

Indeed, it’s a very odd “fact” to pull out of Rubio’s speech no matter how one looks at it. Earlier in the speech, Rubio repeated the absolutely false claim that Barack Obama “got everything he wanted from the Congress” in 2009-2010. That’s a pretty straightforward factual claim, and it’s absolutely false (is it “pants on fire” false? I don’t know, but it’s flat-out false). Rubio then claims that after Obama took office, “The economy slowed down.” If that’s not a pants-on-fire claim, I’m really not sure what is…Rubio doesn’t qualify it at all, he simply says that “everything got worse” and that “the economy slowed down.” It’s just a plain old lie.

Rubio goes on to say that Obama is the first president to pit some Americans against others, but of course that’s both a mischaracterization of Obama’s position and, on the face of it, absolutely false as well (plenty of presidents have pitted some Americans against others; I’d think all of them probably have). Oh, and Rubio also claimed that in the State of the Union address Obama didn’t talk about his own record, but that’s false too; Obama did, in fact, talk about recent job creation and deficit reduction.

I quit listening to the speech at that point (just four minutes in; the bit about conservatives is later), but I have no idea why Politifact pulled the majority conservative point out of the speech, and out of context at that, as the thing to fact-check.

In other words, PolitiFact had other obvious Rubio “facts” (which were lies) it could have fact-checked, but it fact-checked this instead, which it mis-rated in favor of the Republicans. If what White and Dyberg say is true, it would appear that right here we have numerous examples of a Republican Lie Tsunami in the vast ocean of statements that neither of them cared to notice.