Major Liberal Messaging Myths

It’s presidential election season and the liberal messaging machine is out in full force defending its failed agenda.

Having been both inside the inner-sanctum of presidential politics as a Secret Service agent through three presidential elections as well as a candidate for federal office myself, I’ve witnessed the creation of a deceptive political message. I’ve even been attacked personally.

But nothing aggravates me more than political lies that don’t seem to wear out with time, but stick around like the “gifts that keeps on giving.” Blinded by ideology, many left-leaning pseudo-journalists simply refuse to tell the public the truth about these lies. Given that the media refuses to do its job, I’ve put together this list of the top liberal messaging myths, used during election season, to help you correct the record when debating your liberal friends.

1. President Clinton Generated a Federal Government “Surplus” (Used to discredit conservative fiscal philosophy) It’s disturbing enough that I hear this particular myth repeated by opinion writers and commentators, but I have also seen mainstream media outlets report this as fact. This is a lie so easily debunked that it surprises me that journalists are willing to risk the small amount of credibility they have left in repeating it.Here are the facts: President Clinton never ran a budget surplus in any year of his presidency. If you dispute this then please take the time to click this link which will direct you to the U.S. Treasury’s own website which provides detailed data on the national debt. Plug in the Clinton presidency years and you will notice that the national debt rose every year of the Clinton presidency. The national debt never went down. Now, ask yourself, how did the federal government manage to run a “surplus” while the national debt continued to increase? The answer is that they didn’t run a surplus. Social Security ran a surplus, and that surplus was spent by lawmakers when it was turned over to the U.S. Treasury. There was never a federal budget surplus.
2. American CEOs Earn 300 Times the Average Worker’s Salary (Used to discredit capitalism) Far-left outlets love this talking point and use it often to highlight income inequality in America despite the fact that it’s categorically false. The study which reported this 300 to 1 ratio between CEO pay and employee pay studied the 350 largest American companies, but there are hundreds of thousands of CEOs in the United States whose salaries were left out of that sensational statistic.Here’s an analogy to highlight the absurdity of limiting the reporting of CEO pay to an infinitesimally-small portion of the business world: It would be similar to reporting that the players in the Major League Baseball All-Star Game are 300 times better than the players in the local senior softball league. Of course, when you cherry-pick the data to pre-select the biggest and best companies in America, and the biggest and best players in the Major Leagues, you will get large disparities. Here’s the truth: The real ratio of CEO pay to employee pay is closer to 4 to 1 when all of our CEOs are considered, not just the ones which advance the Left’s anti-capitalist agenda. Not exactly the eye-opening number you were expecting, is it? But the Left isn’t interested in opening eyes, they are more interested in blindfolds.

3. The U.S. Infant Mortality Rate is the Highest Among High-Income Countries (Used to discredit free-market healthcare) Engage in any conversation with a liberal about Obamacare or single-payer healthcare and, undoubtedly, you will hear this false data point thrown out there as fact. They use this faux-statistic to discredit the small portion of the U.S. healthcare that remains open to the free market. This deliberately misleading talking point has even been debunked by the very same wealthy OECD countries quoted in the faux statistic, when they stated, “Some of the international variation in infant and neonatal mortality rates may be due to variations among countries in registering practices of premature infants (whether they are reported as live births or not).”In other words, this statistics is meaningless because it compares apples to oranges. If the countries measured in the study are not using the same characteristics to account for live births then the comparison is meaningless. Isn’t it odd how the Left claims to be on the side of “science” only when science supports some ends they wish to reach? When the real science proves the Left wrong, they resort to data manipulation and chicanery.
4. President George W. Bush’s Tax Cuts Worsened the Deficit (Used to discredit tax cuts) During both of my political campaigns I had this whopper thrown at me by editorial board staff members of the Washington Post. Making an awkward interview even worse, the Washington Post staffers were unwilling to accept the fact that this proclamation about the Bush tax cuts was not factually accurate, despite my repeated protestations.Here is the truth: The George W. Bush tax cuts didn’t cost the federal government any tax revenue. In the four years following the Bush tax cuts, the federal government experienced record tax revenue growth. This piece of data is only in dispute by those who are either willingly ignorant or willingly engaging in a campaign of deception. There is no third option.

   There’s an important election right around the corner, please don’t let the Left dominate the conversation with false data. Each time one of these false statistics is repeated, without being challenged, its status as a pseudo-fact is calcified. Be a Paul or Paulette Revere for the truth and help correct the record by challenging these myths whenever the opportunity presents itself.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review.

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