[SoConPubbie]

He did not lie about Al Gore. Al gore had not yet claimed to have "invented" the internet (he did that in 1999), and he was not considered "Mr GLobal Warming" until much later.

Perry did NOT say that Al Gore was a solid conservative in 1988, some of his supporters have claimed he was a conservative democrat, and they'll have to explain what they meant. I remember Al Gore not being a crazy lunatic in the 1980s. He had some good qualities, he as reasonably pro-life, and was good on gun rights.

You're making excuses, equivocating for what amounts to lying Charles.

And just because you think Palin supporters or Palin herself was lying has NOTHING to do with the LIE that Perry told tonight.

Gore had a 9% ACU rating in 1988, it doesn't get much lower than that.

Perry's hoping that nobody's paying attention and that this cleans up some of his baggage.

It would have been better if he had actually taken the honorable path and told the truth, this is going to make it much worse.

The base will not be amused.

[CharlesWayneCT]

And just because you think Palin supporters or Palin herself was lying has NOTHING

Don't put words in my mouth. I explicitly said that I did NOT think Sarah Palin was lying. Nor did I say that Palin Supporters were lying. I said that Sarah Palin SUPPORTERS make arguments that suggest that Sarah Palin was lying.

I know, it's a bit more complicated than the 4-word mis-statements of my words that you used. Real arguments often are more complex than people want to think about.

What amounts to lying? Everybody here knows that the public persona of Al Gore in 1988 was NOTHING like the public persona of Al Gore nowadays. Heck, everybody knows that Al Gore in 1992 was not the joke that he is today.

That was exactly what Perry was saying -- don't judge his support of Al Gore in 1988 by what your image is of Al Gore today, because that image is a lot different than the Al Gore of 1988.

You and others are the one that are getting hyper-literal with his statement, claiming that it was a specific instance of fact-claiming; I'm refuting you using that same specific fact-claiming and literal interpretation.

You can't have it both ways. If you are going to talk about generalities of the statement, then you fail in your argument because we all know that generally speaking, the statement is absolutely correct -- The Al Gore in 1988 was NOT the internet-creating, love-canal-inspiring, global warming nutcase spokesperson that he is today. That is an absolute fact.

But if you want to take it entirely literally as a fact-claim, then IN FACT Al gore had not yet claimed to have invented the internet, nor was he known as Mr. Global Warming, in 1988. That is exactly what Perry said, and that is literally the truth.

And if you want to argue that, then all you need to is provide specific evidence that Al Gore wsa reported as inventing the internet in some newspaper before 1988, or that Al Gore was being called Mr. Global Warming, or Mr. Ozone, in newspapers and on radio shows before 1988.

This very article admits that neither of those is the case, and therefore shows that Perry was being truthful. Your arguments also show his truthfulness, because you have admitted, and not withdrawn your claim, that al gore's name wasn't known when he first was an eco-nut.

People will have to decide if they can support a candidate who was a democrat until 1989. But they don't need to be mislead by false claims that Perry is lying.