Can anyone think of good ways to notice when outright deception is being used?

I suspect one of the best ways may be to try to re-create their reasoning from the beginning, so you engage the logical inference part of your brain in trying to (re)reason, rather than the 'listening to and believing' part, as we now know that we first believe, and have to consciously reject, new ideas, rather than the other way around.

Where money is concerned, I suppose you could check whether income matches expenditures.

other examples of flagrant misdirection

I can think of many examples of cases where candidates evade the most basic of economics, but as Politics is the Mind-Killer, I think it's probably best not to bring them up.