FactCheck.org : Whoppers of 2012, Early Edition

FactCheck.org : Whoppers of 2012, Early Edition.

"In Chicago, the Obama campaign for weeks has been consumed with the date (1999 or 2001?) of Romney’s departure from Bain Capital, the venture-capital firm he founded. The reason? The Obama campaign wants to blame Romney for management decisions made after Feb. 11, 1999, at a few of the companies in which Bain invested. Romney did retain ownership and corporate titles listed in routine SEC filings after February 1999, but no evidence has yet shown that he exercised any active control over Bain’s investment decisions during this time. Romney was working 12-hour days, six days a week, as president of the 2002 Winter Olympics committee and was not actively involved in Bain.

Obama has even stooped to make a false claim that Romney favored banning abortion in cases of rape or incest, as though the contrast between their actual positions was not sufficiently clear. In doing so, the president mirrors the distortions of opponents who once accused him of favoring ‘infanticide.’

For his part, Romney has claimed to have created as many as 100,000 jobs while at Bain, happily taking credit for hiring that happened long after he left (and offering no actual accounting for the figure). He has accused Obama of waging a ‘war on women’ based on job losses from a recession that started more than a year before Obama took office. He has falsely stated in a TV ad that an inspector general found stimulus contracts ‘were steered to ‘friends and family,’ ’ when the IG made no such finding. And he has repeatedly misrepresented Obama’s new health care law.

Meanwhile the tone of the campaign becomes ever more nasty. Obama campaign aides recently suggested Romney was guilty of a ‘felony,’ while a Romney surrogate said the president should ‘learn to be an American.’

And neither candidate speaks candidly of what he would actually do if elected. Romney won’t say how he plans to cut taxes further without losing revenues. Cutting or eliminating the deduction for home mortgages or for state income taxes? Obama says nothing about how Social Security is to be preserved. Raising the payroll tax?

Perhaps we’ll hear more in the 109 campaigning days to come. Perhaps the candidates will become less personal, more substantive, and more forthcoming about their plans for leading the nation. We remain hopeful. But, based on the facts so far, we’re not optimistic."