The Most Ignorant GOP Presidential Hopefuls

Talk about a wonderful title to a news article! The caption of this post is from a new Daily Beast article that looks at the ignorance and untruthfulness of the GOP slate of would be presidential candidates. The piece looks at each of the candidates and lays out the worse of their lies and/or batshitery, with some of the biggest loons underscoring their unfitness for office. Read the full piece for a run down on each. Here are highlights from my favorites:

Rick Perry - The candidate with most falsehoods hails from the state where more is always better. Rick Perry’s biggest whopper has been repeated at several debates, including in Tampa in September and in Hanover in October: namely, that Texas created 1 million jobs while the country was losing 2.5 million jobs. The good governor goes back to January 2009 to get the national number, and during that span Texas created only about 100,000 jobs. Must be that Lone Star optimism.

Michele Bachmann - During the Hanover debate in October, Bachmann said that the Democrats’ ostensible victory following the debt-ceiling debacle of the summer past gave the president “a $2.4 trillion blank check.” That money, however, was used to make sure the country could meet its obligations.

Herman Cain - During the October 18 debate in Las Vegas, Cain claimed that his flat-tax plan would not raise taxes for 84 percent of Americans. As Factcheck points out, a Tax Policy Center report says the opposite—that, in fact, a large majority of Americans, 83.8 percent to be exact, would face higher taxes under Cain’s plan.

Rick Santorum - At the CNN debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, Santorum revived a tired GOP talking point when he said that health care for the elderly would be rationed under the federal health-care bill. As Factcheck points out, the law specifically says the health-care program “shall not include any recommendation to ration health care.”