A statement about “Obamacare” which appears to have been started by Governor Rick Scott of Florida back in 2011 began to come up as a GOP standard talking point in 2012, re-gaining traction when Rush Limbaugh used it on his radio show (following the Supreme Court’s ruling on its constitutionality)—that the new healthcare law was bringing about the largest tax hike in the world…in the United States…on the middle class. Or some variation on that theme.
As I worked on this post, which was initially going to be a prediction that this statement would definitely be on the “short list” of finalists for PolitiFact Lie of the Year (PLOTY), if not the PLOTY, the so-called “Pants on Fire” factor was devised by my conservative counterpart, in a research paper where he was trying to find an “objective” way to determine the "subjectivity” of classifying a False statement (an “inaccurate” claim) Pants on Fire (“ridiculously so”). But he hardly had any theories to put forward (well, ignoring all possibilities so he could claim his usual "PolitiFact liberal bias") while Eric Levine of the blog Content in Reality did, in a post entitled “PolitiFact Bias Still Making the Same Mistakes” after reading the PolitiFact Bias research paper:
Not all false claims are lies. Most false claims can probably be explained by ignorance. However, a repeatedly debunked claim could spark a shift for some claims from “False” to “Pants on Fire.” The more likely you are to repeat an already debunked claim, the more likely your refusal to accept the debunking may constitute ridiculous lying. As can be seen, Bryan's justification fails to dismiss the possibility that Republicans lie more often.
The possibility of repeating “an already debunked claim” obviously raises PolitiFact’s ire for assigning a Pants on Fire. So, all for a very similar statement following Rick Scott in 2011 (by PolitiFact Florida) and then Rush Limbaugh (by PolitiFact National), PolitiFact Wisconsin rated Mark Neuman and Jeff Fitizgerald; PolitiFact Ohio rated Josh Mandel; PolitiFact Florida rated the PAC American Commitment; PolitiFact Georgia rated Phil Gingrey, and PolitiFact Tennessee rated Charlotte Bergmann.
In other words, these are eight good examples of something which brings confirmation to Levine’s theory about repeatedly debunked statements.
Another frequent claim (made as early as 2010 and again in 2011) about the healthcare law including a 3.8% sales tax on all real estate transactions, has been repeatedly debunked: PolitiFact National most recently looked at a chain e-mail claim around the same time the "biggest tax increase in history" claims were going around; PolitiFact Rhode Island rated the same statement by talk show host Buddy Cianci (which, according to the fact-check, he repeated “four times in 45 seconds”) as well as earlier this year in another chain e-mail claim. And since I’ve made known my proclivity to compare PolitiFact with other fact-checkers, FactCheck.Org, the Washington Post FactChecker and even Snopes have debunked this one too.
Since these have been almost all claims of chain e-mails, and the claim itself is so specific, I think it could be on the list, but probably won’t get the PLOTY award. It just serves as another example of repeated GOP claims which merit a Pants on Fire.
And on the Democrat side, you better not exaggerate what the healthcare law might save in money, either.
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