Topic: NewsBusters
An Aug. 27 NewsBusters post by Colleen Raezler claimed that Bill Adair of PolitiFact.org "discredited" Joe Biden's claim that John McCain votes with George W. Bush 95 percent of the time. In fact, the section of the "Morning Joe" transcript that Raezler reproduces quotes Adair as saying: "in terms of Biden, the 95 percent is just something where you've got to understand that that's sort of the worse case scenario. He's cherry picking. 95 percent was last year."
The PolitiFact item on the claim, which gives it a "half-true" rating, explains further:
McCain’s 95 percent score was the high-water mark of his presidential support during President Bush’s tenure, and was partly a reflection of the new political calculus in the Democratic-controlled Congress.
But other years, McCain's rating was lower. He supported Bush as infrequently as 77 percent of the time in 2005, and backed the president’s position an average of 89 percent of the time since 2001. By congressional standards, that’s solidly partisan, but hardly marching in lockstep.
So it's not "discredited," as Raezler claims. Incomplete and exaggerated, perhaps, but with a core of truth to it. Unlike, say, McCain's claim that Obama wants to increase the size of government by 23 percent, which PolitiFact has rated a "pants on fire" lie. Indeed, PolitiFact has found a higher percentage of recent claims by McCain to be "half-true" or less than statements by Obama, and no Obama statement has ever been given the "pants on fire" designation.
