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Killgore Trout12/06/2012 6:34:12 pm PST

Wingnuts at Hot Air (which I’m not allowed to link to) are outraged that the Republican’s “War on Women” isn’t in the running for Politifact’s Lie of the Year.

To make sure I got the whole story, I spoke with PolitiFact editor Bill Adair, who told me why the “War on Women” didn’t make the cut:

“Lie of the Year comes from statements PolitiFact has rated ‘False’ or ‘Pants on Fire.’ We rate the ‘Lie of the Year’ as the boldest statement or the statement with the biggest reach. Obviously, it’s subjective,” he said. “We didn’t do a fact-check on a statement that there was a War on Women. It was an opinion, and we don’t fact-check opinions. People used it as a sum-up of a variety of aspects of the 2012 campaigns, but it was an overall opinion, not a statement of policy fact.”

I don’t know if PolitiFact’s liberal bias was coming through here, or if the staff just dropped the ball, but I’d say the policy statements and implications were pretty significant, as was the reach. And as Paul Wilson of the Media Research Center pointed out on Twitter, the “War” was even used as a pretext to oppose a ban on sex-selective abortions that was debated in Congress.

Every year, partisans attack or defend PolitiFact for its Lie of the Year. It’s become an annual pre-Christmas tradition. This year, I’m going to join in and say that the “War on Women” should have at least made the Finals, if not been handed the dubious championship trophy.