Feb 17, 2016 4 min read

Aeschylus, the Greek soldier and playwright, is credited with saying, “In war, truth is the first casualty.”

We would add that truth also takes a horrific beating when presidential campaigns are waged. In fact, some of the current crop of Republican candidates can be said to have beaten the truth, stabbed it, shot it repeatedly and then set its corpse on fire.

The stretching of the truth, or even outright lying, by political candidates is no doubt as old as politics itself, but the appetite for it among those on the receiving end – supporters of the candidates – seems to be at an all-time high. The shift in that direction really ramped up about eight years ago when a certain black fellow with a “funny” name first sought the presidency.

Almost as soon as Barack Obama became a serious threat to win the Democratic nomination, those on the other side of the political spectrum began asserting that he was 1) a closet Muslim, 2) from Kenya, or 3) both.

Obama’s opponent in the 2008 election, Sen. John McCain, ran into such lunacy repeatedly, and to his credit, he didn’t take the bait.

McCain was booed and jeered at a town hall meeting in Minnesota when he had the audacity to say that Obama is a “decent person” and that he would show him respect on the campaign trail. The lowlight of the event was when a dim-witted member of the crowd came up to the microphone and, speaking of Obama, blurted out, “He’s an Arab!” McCain grabbed the microphone from her and said, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man (and) citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not (an Arab).” One must wonder whether McCain, at that moment, was rethinking his decision to seek the presidency.

And the disrespect for the truth and those who tell it has only gotten worse in the last eight years.

The most recent Republican presidential debate was instructive.

Speaking hours after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia became known, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, walking in lockstop with leaders of his party, said the next president should be the one to choose Scalia’s replacement. He claimed that no Supreme Court nominee had been confirmed by the Senate in a presidential election year over the past 80 years. Enter debate moderator John Dickerson, who pointed out that, in fact, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan nominee, had been confirmed by the Senate in the election year of 1988.

“I just want to get the facts straight for the audience,” said Dickerson. For his trouble, he was booed heartily.

At another point in the debate, the crowd turned on one of its own, frontrunner Donald Trump, who said the war in Iraq was “a big, fat mistake” and that President George W. Bush failed to protect the country on 9/11. From the reaction of the crowd, you’d have thought he had volunteered to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Trump needs to recognize that his supporters are not “fact-based” voters. In a poll a few months back, 60 percent of the businessman’s backers remained convinced that President Obama is a Muslim.

Frankly, that claim about the president is getting stale, so stale that it wouldn’t surprise us if one of the more unpredictable Republican candidates – Ben Carson, maybe – would claim, “I have evidence that President Obama came to America from the planet Subsaharatune!” While his supporters might be put off by the use of the word “evidence” – sounds too science-y – a few would no doubt sign on to the notion that the president arrived here aboard a flying saucer. Carrying a Quran.