Dear Santorum Bashers. Read this and weep.

I’m so sick of the Paulbots and the Romneybots treating Santorum like Obama when it comes to spending. Even Romney and his minions are trying to make this ‘he spends like a Democrat’ smear stick. Problem is, it’s absolutely wrong as the Weekly Standard pointed out today.

I can’t post the whole article here so you need to go read the whole thing there. But I will post the most pertinent part:

NTU’s (scoring paints a radically different picture of Santorum’s 12-year tenure in the Senate (1995 through 2006) than one would glean from the rhetoric of the Romney campaign. Fifty senators served throughout Santorum’s two terms: 25 Republicans, 24 Democrats, and 1 Republican/Independent. On a 4-point scale (awarding 4 for an A, 3.3 for a B+, 3 for a B, 2.7 for a B-, etc.), those 50 senators’ collective grade point average (GPA) across the 12 years was 1.69 — which amounts to a C-. Meanwhile, Santorum’s GPA was 3.66 — or an A-. Santorum’s GPA placed him in the top 10 percent of senators, as he ranked 5th out of 50.

Across the 12 years in question, only 6 of the 50 senators got A’s in more than half the years. Santorum was one of them. He was also one of only 7 senators who never got less than a B. (Jim Talent served only during Santorum’s final four years, but he always got less than a B, earning a B- every year and a GPA of 2.7.) Moreover, while much of the Republican party lost its fiscal footing after George W. Bush took office — although it would be erroneous to say that the Republicans were nearly as profligate as the Democrats — Santorum was the only senator who got A’s in every year of Bush’s first term. None of the other 49 senators could match Santorum’s 4.0 GPA over that span.

So, if Santorum was among — and perhaps even topped the list of — the most fiscally conservative senators during this period, who were the least fiscally conservative? That prize would have to go to the two North Dakota senators, who despite representing a state that voted 23 points to the right of the national average in the presidential elections, managed to achieve GPAs of 0.08 (Democrat Kent Conrad) and 0.00 (Democrat Byron Dorgan). Honorable mentions would have to go to Max Baucus (D., Mont.), who got a 0.84 GPA in a state that was 18 points to the right of the national average; Harry Reid (D., Nev.), who got a 0.08 GPA in a state that was 4 points to the right of average; and Utah Republicans Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, who each barely cleared a 3.0 (3.11 for Bennett, 3.08 for Hatch) despite representing the state that, in the presidential elections, was the nation’s most right-leaning (38 points to the right of average).

As for Santorum’s potential opponent in the fall, Barack Obama’s three years in the Senate (2005 through 2007) overlapped only with Santorum’s final two years. (In 2008, Obama effectively left the Senate to campaign for President and therefore didn’t cast enough votes for NTU to score him that year.) In both of the years that the two men overlapped (2005 and 2006), as well as throughout Obama’s three years’ worth of preparation for the presidency, Obama’s GPA was 0.00 — a rock-solid F.

Now that’s acting like a Democrat — something Santorum has never done.

Also consider for a moment if Paul Ryan were in the race. Would you vote for him? He too voted for the Prescription Drug plan and also support a cap on CEO pay with Obama in 2009. Would that stop me from voting for him now? Heck no. My point is, as Levin says, you can pick over someone’s record and find things you don’t like, perhaps even egregious things. But as the NTU points out, when you look at someone’s total record you often get a different and better picture of the their spending history. And for Santorum, he outranked almost everyone.

is Santorum perfect? No. But is Santorum a conservative? Absolutely. And someone who I believe would fight to do the right as president. And if we give him a Republican House and Senate, it’ll be even more motivation to fight for what is right.

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P.S. To those of you who think I’ve forsaken Newt, I haven’t. It’s just that Newt clips are harder to come by these days and I’ve not been that impressed with his most recent speeches (CPAC). But I still like him and would be supporting him more fiercely if he had more momentum. But for now it’s all SantorumSurge.


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