In the latest Fox News poll, 37 percent of those polled think that President Obama lies “most of the time” while another 24 percent say he just lies “some of the time.” Twenty percent say he lies “only now and then,” while 15 percent say he never lies. Put another way, 85 percent of those polled think the president lies, while 15 percent don’t think he lies.
This poll mirrors the Fox News poll taken back in November. At that time, half of American voters thought the president “knowingly lied” when he repeatedly said that Americans could keep their own health plans under ObamaCare. Just last month his approval rating declined to an all-time low, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. RealClearPolitics job approval numbers on Thursday, April 17, continued to reflect his decline, with just 43 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving.
Rasmussen has tracked the president’s approval numbers all the way back to the beginning of his first term. At the very beginning his “approval index” (those strongly approving minus those strong disapproving) hit a +30, but have steadily declined ever since. The last time his approval numbers were positive was in December 2012, 15 months ago. Yesterday they came in at -17, near the lows of his presidency.
And no wonder. Websites across the Internet have been tracking not only the president’s approval/disapproval ratings, but many have been keeping count of the number of hard, evidence-backed lies the president has told during the last five years. Infowars.com presently documents 252 examples of “Barack Obama’s Lying, Lawbreaking, Corruption, Cronyism, etc.,” while BizPac Review counts only the top 20 most egregious canards uttered by the president while in office. Endalldisease blog counts 21 lies while Politifact tracks 21 lies as well, but not the same ones.
Number one on most websites’ hit parades is this: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what … you can keep your family doctor.”
Others claiming top-10 slots on the mendacity list include:
• “We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay.”
• “If we haven’t gotten our troops out of Iraq by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do.”
• “We’ve got shovel-ready projects all across the country.”
• “We will eliminate all income taxation of seniors making less than $50,000 per year.”
• “We are going to work with you to lower your healthcare premiums by $2,500 [and we’ll] do it by the end of my first term as president.”
• “My father served in World War II.”
• “We now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history.… That fence is now basically complete.”
• Regarding Wall Street’s abusive lending practices concerning risky mortgages, Obama repeatedly vowed to “hold accountable those who broke the law.”
• Before signing ObamaCare into law, the president promised: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future.”
What the Fox News, Rasmussen, and Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls have done is to show that finally, after five years of presidential deception, distortion, and equivocation, the American people are catching on, and the president’s past is catching up with him.
A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
