politifact.com

Rick Santorum’s inaccurate streak on the Truth-O-Meter

By Martha M. Hamilton

Published on Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 at 1:13 p.m.

The day after the April 3, 2012, primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia, many political commentators were calling Rick Santorum’s bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination finished, though Santorum vowed to press on.

Since the beginning of the year the former Pennsylvania senator has faced a steep challenge in his effort to overcome frontrunner Mitt Romney. At the same time, we’ve noticed another trend — more and more of his statements checked by PolitiFact have ended up in inaccurate territory.

The most recent was Santorum’s claim in a Wisconsin stump speech that “I think it’s seven or eight of the California system of universities don’t even teach an American history course. It’s not even available to be taught.” Far from “not available,” American history courses are offered at all but one of 33 state universities in California — a medical school. We rated the claim False. (Stephen Colbert had fun with this one.)

We’ve been checking Santorum’s statements since he hit the campaign trail in Iowa over a year ago — 44 in all. See his report card here.