Bush and the Republicans lie far more often than many of us realize. However, it's often difficult to convince others that they are lying because it's often difficult to find obvious examples. Of course, as we can see from the small, but growing number of submissions in this forum, as time goes on the gap between the truth and what Republicans claim is becoming pretty obvious.
Here are some methods commonly used...

1. The Big Lie
- This is an outrageous statement that few people believe at first, but that has an impact over time through repetition.
For example, "Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster." Few people believe it, but the more often it gets repeated, the more people think Hillary is an evil conniving witch... even if they still think she didn't murder Vince. I know Hillary isn't popular with PDA, I'm not defending her policies, just demonstrating how the Big Lie works. Whatever we might think of her, she didn't murder her husband's best friend.
2. The Insinuendo
- This is a somewhat true, indirect criticism that leads one to the wrong conclusion. For example, "America can't afford to return to the pre-9/11 mentality." This statement implies that nobody cared about terrorism before 9/11 and that the Clinton administration somehow left us vulnerable to attack on 9/11, while also implying that Bush is doing a better job.
3. The Blinder
- Named for the device used to keep carriage horses from getting spooked by partially shielding their eyes, this is by far the most common form of Republican lie. What you do is leave out vital information that can change the conclusion of a statement. For example, "The Founding Fathers fought a war so they wouldn't have to pay taxes." That statement basically tells the listener that taxes are un-American, by leaving out half of "No Taxation Without Representation."
4. The Scope
- This is a lie of proportion. Al Franken gives a great example of this in his book,/ The Truth, with Jokes/. While discussing Social Security, Bush apparently tells a reporter that before discussing the issue, it's important to understand the scope of the problem. He then goes on to claim that Social Security has $11 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities adjusted for inflation and that something must be done about this. By providing such an unimaginably huge number as the starting point, Bush builds the case for an impending crisis. The part he leaves out is that the time scale for this liability is from now until the year infinity... or forever. Even worse, while $11 trillion sounds huge, it's pretty small compared to the $17 trillion we have spent of Bush's tax cuts. I guess this would be an example of combined Scoping and Blindering.
5. The Changeling
- This is where you use one thing to justify something unrelated. Iraq is our most prominent example of this. The War on Terror was used to justify invading Iraq. Another example of this would be using the economy to justify lowering the capital gains and estate taxes. Still more would be using Katrina to justify suspending federal wage laws, using Katrina to justify corporate welfare for Halliburton (I assume as part of an effort to increase the value of Cheney's "blind" investment portfolio), using homeland security to justify pork projects for states like Wyoming.... I could continue, but you get the point.

If you can think of more kinds of lies, please add them to our list!