In Boise, Mitt Romney Says Crapo Not Fiscal Conservative, BFF With Unions

Mitt Romney didn’t exactly say this yesterday in Boise, but he might as well have. He’s alleged that based on his record, Rick Santorum isn’t a fiscal conservative. In other places, Romney’s assailed Santorum as, “big labor’s favorite Republican.”

Romney cherry picks a vote here or there to justify these statements. But if we want to know what really went on, we don’t need to look a handful of votes ripped from context by political opponents from twenty years ago. We need to instead look at Santorum’s whole career and his ratings by groups that had no intention of having their ratings used in a Presidential campaign.

Three good comparisons:

1) The National Taxpayers Union ratings for fiscal conservative issues.

2) The American Conservative Union rating for overall conservatism.

3) The AFL-CIO ratings for labor comparison.

The problem? Santorum’s record in Congress is very similar to Idaho’s Senior Senator Mike Crapo, who has endorsed Mitt Romney. Let us compare the eight years that Crapo and Santorum served in the Senate:

In eight years in the Senate, Santorum’s record finished ahead of Crapo four times, behind him twice, and twice they received the same grade.  For overall conservative ratings, Santorum edges Crapo six out of eight years, though in 2002 and 2003, Senate absences accounted for the difference between the two.

As for AFL-CIO Ratings, Mike Crapo received a career rating of 12% through 2009, Rick Santorum’s career rating is 13%. ‘

It would be absurd to suggest that Mike Crapo is in the pocket of big labor and is not a fiscal conservative. But that’s exactly what the Romney camp wants us to believe about Rick Santorum who had a comparable record  to Crapo when they were serving in the Senate.  Therefore, according to Mitt Romney’s logic despite all evidence to the contrary, Crapo must not be a fiscal conservative.

Which raises another point? How is Mitt Romney, the supposed fiscal conservative getting support from fiscal “liberals” like Crapo (with his Santorumesque record), Mike Simpson (who is a real big spender), or Butch Otter (who like Santorum voted for Medicare Part D.)

If Santorum is an untrustworthy fiscal liberal, than aren’t the people who have endorsed Romney untrustworthy fiscal liberals? And if the people who say Romney is trustworthy aren’t trustworthy than where does that leave us? If we actually pretend the Romney campaign is sincere, I fear our wheels will end up spinning like Harry Mudd’s android.

Of course, nothing the Romney campaign is saying about Santorum sincerely bothers them. Some of their biggest supporters are much more liberal than Santorum. The fact that they won’t admit to that is clear from an actual examination of the Senate record rather than cherry picking for attack ads is that Santorum’s overall record was as conservative as a U.S. Senator from Idaho even though Santorum hailed from a blue state with a big labor population.

Read more at Adam’s Blog