Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney continued the home-state slam Wednesday, claiming that Kerry had voted for "tax hikes 98 times." The Bush campaign made the same claim in a television ad released last week, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center has already shot it down.

The problem with the "98 times" claim is the Republicans' fuzzy math. While their campaign calculus is getting better -- in March, the President claimed that Kerry "voted over 350 times for higher taxes on the American people" -- the Republicans' calculation repeatedly miscounts and mischaracterizes Kerry's votes.

Annenberg explains that 43 of the 98 "tax increase" votes were actually votes on budget resolutions that did not, in and of themselves, raise taxes. Moreover, in several instances, the total of 98 includes multiple votes on the same piece of legislation: By the GOP's math, Kerry's support for President Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction package as it wound its way through Congress should count as 16 separate votes to raise taxes. Kerry gets dinged six times for a single 1996 budget resolution, seven times for a 1997 budget resolution, and six more times for supporting a proposal to raise the cigarette tax. That proposal was sponsored by Sen. John McCain -- a Republican.

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele also took Kerry to task for sharing views with Republicans. Steele criticized Kerry for proposing a $6 billion cut in intelligence funding "just a year after the first attack on the World Trade Center." What Steele didn't say: Three months before Kerry made his proposal, Rep. Porter Goss -- Bush's pick to be the new CIA chief -- proposed a much larger cut in intelligence funding. Neither Goss' proposal nor Kerry's passed. But as Annenberg has noted, a Republican proposal to cut $1 billion from the intelligence budget passed on a voice vote the same year.

While Republicans have aimed most of their truth-stretching at Kerry, they have also engaged in the occasional embellishment to bolster Bush's image as a resolute leader. On the convention's opening night, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called Bush "a leader who is willing to stick with difficult decisions even as public opinion shifts." On the second night, Schwarzenegger said that Bush is a "leader who doesn't flinch, doesn't waver, does not back down." While it's true that Bush has stuck stubbornly to some of his failed policies -- until this week, he couldn't bring himself to admit any mistakes in Iraq -- just as often he has crumbled when public opinion has turned against his views.

Bush initially opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, then changed his mind when it was clear the votes were against him. He opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission, then supported it. He opposed a congressional investigation into the intelligence failures that led to the war in Iraq, then supported it.

The president who was praised so often this week for his "unflinching" war on terror once said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive", then said that he didn't really care about finding him. The president who never wavers used to say that America will win the war on terror; over the weekend, he said "I don't think we can ever win it"; over the last week, he's been explaining that he didn't really mean what he said when he said it.

The flip-flops don't fit the image Karl Rove has crafted for Bush, so the convention speakers have simply ignored them. In their place, they've told stories suggesting that Bush has shown "courage" by appearing in photo ops -- grabbing that megaphone at Ground Zero, eating turkey with the troops in Baghdad -- and by standing up to public opinion. Schwarzenegger said: "The President didn't go into Iraq because the polls told him it was popular. As a matter of fact, the polls said just the opposite."

But as a matter of fact, that's not a fact. In a CBS/New York Times poll released on March 6, 2003 -- 11 days before Bush gave his final ultimatum to Saddam Hussein -- 69 percent of the respondents said they approved of U.S. military action to remove Hussein from power. While the White House surely helped shape public opinion -- by misrepresenting intelligence, by incessantly linking Saddam Hussein and 9/11, by predicting that American soldiers would be "greeted as liberators" -- the president didn't buck public opinion when he went to war.

On Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist tried to make Bush look like a strong leader on domestic issues, saying that he would stand up to the trial lawyers who are driving up the costs of healthcare. Repeating a line used by Bush himself, Frist declared: "Let's be clear. You can no longer be both pro-patient and pro-trial lawyer." He said that Kerry has "made his choice" by choosing Edwards as his running mate. But Frist has made his choice, too: in the Republican Senate primary in Florida, Frist endorsed Mel Martinez, a millionaire trial lawyer.

No matter. Frist continued to press his charge, telling the story of a Ft. Lauderdale doctor who he said was forced to give up his medical liability insurance when the costs grew too high. Frist expressed concern that the hospital where the doctor works, Ft. Lauderdale's Broward General, might be forced to close its emergency room because of all those expensive lawsuits by rich trial lawyers. "That hospital has the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region," Frist said. "What if it closes?" But Vicki Martin, a spokesperson for Broward General, told Salon Wednesday that she is unaware of any discussion about closing the hospital's trauma center. And Frist's claim that Broward General has "the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region?" That's false, too. There are at least two others, and one of them, Hollywood's Memorial Regional Hospital, is less than 10 miles away.

The Republicans paid tribute to Ronald Reagan Wednesday night, and they've talked a lot this week about the lessons he taught them. They've surely taken one to heart. It was the late president, after all, who once said: "Facts are stupid things."

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