Politifact Nails Ted Cruz

Non-partisan fact-check website Politifact.com details the fact-challenged world of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). 

So far, we’ve issued the following ratings on Cruz’s statements.

• True 1 (4%)
• Mostly True 3 (12%)
• Half True 4 (16%)
• Mostly False 5 (20%)
• False 8 (32%)
• Pants on Fire 4 (16%)

Cruz doesn't fare much better on FactCheck.org.

This continues a trend in which Republican politicians get hammered on the fact-check websites compared to their Democratic counterparts. For example, Barack Obama does pretty well (for a politician) with 46% true or largely true statements versus 28% mostly false, false and Pants on Fire statements. Mitt Romney fared worse (31% largely true vs. 41% largely false).

One of the Republican Party's biggest problems is that they seem to value ideological conformity over factual accuracy. Non-partisan observers such as Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute have noted this.

[The GOP has become] an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition . . . all but declaring war on the government.

Enabled by right-wing media, the Republican Party now lives in its own factual universe.  This is a big issue with young voters who surveys show are deeply distrustful of the ideologies of either party but are particularly put off by Republicans who they see as rigid, out of touch, and stuck in the past. If I were a Rpeublican, this is the demographic group I would be most worried about losing.