“The one thing I worry about is by doing it the way we do it, putting up articles one after another, we reinforce the notion that all politicians are liars and it doesn’t matter who gets elected,” said Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org, which launched in 2003 and was the sole independent site keeping an eye on campaign dictum in the last presidential election.

“In 2004, Factcheck.org was considered [the] authority,” said a senior McCain aide, who was provided by the campaign to speak about fact-checking on a not-for-attribution basis. He said he would “love to see it get back” to “fewer” fact-checking arms.

“It’s reaching a level of ridiculousness that demands some re-consideration of the role fact-checking should play,” the aide said…

“It is becoming wallpaper,” says Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, echoing a sentiment shared by both of this year’s presidential campaigns. “After a while, you get enough of a pattern on the wall you don’t even know it’s there.”