During more than an hour and 45 minutes of intense debate on Wednesday night, the Republican presidential candidates did not shy away from exchanging blows with each other. But some of the toughest criticism — and some of the most factually problematic — was reserved for the policies, programs, and principles traditionally associated with Democrats, from tackling climate change to broadening access to health care to providing retirement insurance for the elderly.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, assailed the federal government and President Obama in particular for what he said were overbearing regulations on oil drilling, coal mining and nuclear energy.

“We are an energy-rich nation and we’re living like an energy-poor nation,” he said, asserting that Mr. Obama had halted offshore drilling, blocked construction of new coal plants, slowed development of nuclear plants and failed to develop natural gas trapped in shale formations.

But those claims are largely untrue. While Mr. Obama declared a moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP spill in 2010, the government began granting permits again earlier this year and activity is approaching pre-spill levels. The administration recently announced a major lease sale in the western Gulf of Mexico and gave provisional approval to a Shell project in the Arctic off the coast of Alaska. And while a number of utilities have canceled plans to build new coal plants, that is largely because demand for electricity has slowed, not because of new federal regulations.