There’s an old saying, that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes true.

Watching Governor Palin last night, after previously watching John McCain, I realized how true this is.

• Obama voted against funding the war in Iraq. So did John McCain! As I’ve seen it, there were multiple bills at one point. One had a timeline, which John McCain voted against. One didn’t, which Obama voted against. But John McCain and Sarah Palin keep harping on this, because it sounds awful. But John McCain did the same thing.
• Obama wants to raise taxes. On those making over $250,000 a year, sure. But a cornerstone of Obama’s plan is that he’s not going to raise taxes on anyone making less, coupled with tax cuts for the middle class. He describes it in great detail on his site. As part of a middle-class family making under $250,000 a year, we will do better under Obama’s plan than under John McCain’s. But it’s been said so often that Obama wants to raise taxes that it sounds true. It’s not.
• Obama voted to raise taxes on those making $40,000 or more. No, that wasn’t a vote on taxes. And John McCain voted the same way. It was a vote on budget appropriations, not taxes.
• Obama wants to surrender in Iraq. Obama has proposed the same thing that the Iraqi government and George Bush have proposed! A phased withdrawal so we can shift our focus to Afghanistan. (You know, the place with Osama bin Laden.)
• Obama voted 97 times to raise taxes. And care to guess how many times McCain voted to raise taxes? We’re in a war that’s already cost us more than half a trillion dollars, and there’s a proposed $700 billion bailout proposal on the table. When spending increases, you have to raise taxes. Biden put the number of times McCain has voted to raise taxes as many times higher than Obama’s…

It just drives me crazy to see all of these mistruths repeated over and over again. There really ought to be a rule that you have to tell the truth in debates, and that you have to actually answer the questions asked.