Fact Checking Republicans at CPAC

The opinion-filled conference included a few falsehoods.

FactCheck.org
February 14, 2011

Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference this past weekend strayed at times from the facts, although for the most part, they stuck to expressing their low opinions of the current administration and its policies.

Several potential presidential candidates, congressional leaders and high-profile conservatives spoke at the annual conservative gathering in Washington. Among them:

• Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky wrongly claimed that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, during her confirmation hearings, agreed that "the government through the commerce clause could regulate that you eat three vegetables a day."
• Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, was wrong by more than 3 million people when he claimed that there are more unemployed Americans than employed Canadians. He also said President Obama "stood watch over the greatest job loss in modern American history," but the fact is more jobs were lost in Bush’s last year than under Obama.
• Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was wrong when he said Brazil is "totally energy independent," and he also vastly overstated the U.S. natural gas supply.
• Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour claimed that Obama "tried to impose the biggest tax increase in American history on small-business owners by letting the Bush tax cuts expire." But Obama proposed letting cuts expire only for upper-income individuals, most of whom are not small-business owners.

(More here.)