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Fact check: Mitt Romney’s claim that Rick Santorum was a big spender

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The Weekly Standard evaluates Mitt Romney’s claim that Rick Santorum is fiscally liberal. (H/T Shane)

Excerpt:

The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) has been rating members of Congress for 20 years.  NTU is an independent, non-partisan organization that — per its mission statement — “mobilizes elected officials and the general public on behalf of tax relief and reform, lower and less wasteful spending, individual liberty, and free enterprise.”  Steve Forbes serves on its board of directors.

For each session of Congress, NTU scores each member on an A-to-F scale.  NTU weights members’ votes based on those votes’ perceived effect on both the immediate and future size of the federal budget.  Those who get A’s are among “the strongest supporters of responsible tax and spending policies”; they receive NTU’s “Taxpayers’ Friend Award.”  B’s are “good” scores, C’s are “minimally acceptable” scores, D’s are “poor” scores, and F’s earn their recipients membership in the “Big Spender” category.  There is no grade inflation whatsoever, as we shall see.

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.

This much alone would paint an impressive portrait of fiscal conservatism on Santorum’s part.  Yet it doesn’t even take into account a crucial point:  Santorum was representing Pennsylvania.

Based on how each state voted in the three presidential elections over that period (1996, 2000, and 2004), nearly two-thirds of senators represented states that were to the right of Pennsylvania.  In those three presidential elections, Pennsylvania was, on average, 3 points to the left of the nation as a whole.  Pennsylvanians backed the Democratic presidential nominee each time, while the nation as a whole chose the Republican in two out of three contests.

Among the roughly one-third of senators (18 out of 50) who represented states that — based on this measure — were at least as far to the left as Pennsylvania, Santorum was the most fiscally conservative.  Even more telling was the canyon between him and the rest.  After Santorum’s overall 3.66 GPA, the runner-up GPA among this group was 2.07, registered by Olympia Snowe (R., Maine).  Arlen Specter, Santorum’s fellow Pennsylvania Republican, was next, with a GPA of 1.98.  The average GPA among senators who represented states at least as far left as Pennsylvania was 0.52 — or barely a D-.

But Santorum also crushed the senators in the other states.  Those 32 senators, representing states that on average were 16 points to the right of Pennsylvania in the presidential elections, had an average GPA of 2.35 — a C+.

In fact, considering the state he was representing, one could certainly make the case that Santorum was the most fiscally conservative senator during his tenure.  The only four senators whose GPAs beat Santorum’s represented states that were 2 points (Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire), 10 points (Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona), 25 points (Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma), and 36 points (Republican Craig Thomas of Wyoming) to the right of Pennsylvania in the presidential elections.  Moreover, of these four, only Kyl (with a GPA of 3.94) beat Santorum by as much as a tenth of a point.  It’s an open question whether a 3.94 from Arizona is more impressive than a 3.66 from Pennsylvania.

Do you know who is a big tax and spend fiscal liberal, though? MITT ROMNEY.

So, why is liberal Mitt Romney telling lies about conservative Rick Santorum?

New national Rasmussen poll: Santorum leads Romney 39-27

From Newsmax. (H/T Doug)

Excerpt:

Building on his triple play of victories in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri, former Sen. Rick Santorum has now surged to a 12-point lead over Mitt Romney in the race for the GOP presidential nomination heading into a key battle in Romney’s home state of Michigan.

Political analyst and Democratic pollster Doug Schoen tells Newsmax that Romney’s presidential bid is in “deep trouble” and his campaign badly needs a win in the Great Lakes State before heading into the do-or-die Super Tuesday contests on March 6, where voters in 10 states will pick their candidate to become the GOP presidential nominee.

“Romney is in deep trouble. He’s out of arguments. People don’t buy the central premise of his candidacy that he’s a businessman who can get things moving again,” Schoen said in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. “He’s entirely negative — whether it’s about President Obama, Newt Gingrich and now Rick Santorum. And Rick Santorum’s ad basically sums up the case against Mitt Romney: He’s a serial attacker who offers nothing other than negative ads, super PACs, bundlers and special interest money. It’s a recipe for failure.”

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely Republican primary voters released on Wednesday shows Santorum leading with 39 percent support, compared with 27 percent for Romney nationwide.

The two latest polls in Michigan, a state where Mitt Romney grew up and where his father was governor, show Rick Santorum with a 10 point lead and a 9 point lead.

Mitt Romney

Rick Santorum

Videos

Daniel Wallace and Bart Ehrman debate New Testament origins and reliability

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Brought to you by The Ehrman Project.

I did watch this, but there is no snarky summary, because I was busy fixing my desktop hardware while it was playing on my laptop.

For those who cannot see the debate, I do have a consolation prize – a new article I found on the “earliest” manuscript fragment (P52). I said earliest in quotes, because Daniel Wallace thinks that there is a new fragment of Mark that can be dated to the first century – and he even brings it up in his debate with Ehrman (above).

Excerpt:

This manuscript, called the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, is on exhibition at Rylands Library in Manchester, UK.  It measures 3.5 by 2.5 inches, and has writing on both front and back.  The front contains parts of 7 lines from John 18: 31-33; the back contains parts of 7 lines from John 18: 37-38.  This fragment of John is probably the oldest New Testament manuscript discovered so far.

You can see in bold (above) which Greek  letters are actually on the front side of the papyrus.  The papyrus is dated by paleographers between 117 and 138 AD.  Why is this significant?

Let’s say you found a puzzle piece that had a date stamp of 1929 on the back.  Let’s say the partial picture on the puzzle piece that has not faded matches a puzzle piece from a complete 1982 puzzle that you own.  Let’s say the shape of the puzzle piece fits perfectly into your 1982 puzzle.  You would be fairly sure that your 1982 puzzle was originally made in 1929 or before.

What do we learn from the “puzzle piece” called P52?

Early Date

1.  It suggests a 1st century date of the original writing of John’s gospel ~ not in the 2nd to 4th century, as some conspiracy theorists say.  This papyrus was found in Egypt, having been copied in a particular Alexandrian script.  Since it is dated 117-138 based on the particular script (a type of date-stamp), it means that the book of John (thought to be written in Ephesus) had to travel to Egypt and then be copied before early 2nd century.  The P52 papyrus is so fragile that scholars do not want to run other types of tests, and so the dating, though considered very reliable by many, is not iron-clad.  Some scholars even date P52 as early as 90 AD.

Accuracy

2.  It shows the accuracy of the preservation of this passage in John by its incredible agreement with later manuscripts.   P52 has no significant variance with P66, a 2nd-3rd century papyrus fragment which includes much more of the gospel of John.  P52 has no significant variance with our earliest gospels that are in codex (book) form, including 4th century Codex Sinaiticus, 4th century Codex Vaticanus, and 5th century Codex Alexandrinus.  Variations that  exist include word order and pronunciation (itacism) differences .

The early dating and  high level of accuracy of P52 indicate that the gospel of John was written in the 1st century and preserved in a way that gives us confidence in the reliability of the gospel of John that we have in our Bibles.

The article explains what P52 means to Bart Ehrman’s case. You can make a similar case for the reliability of transmission by looking at how little the Old Testament has changed from the time of the Dead Sea scrolls to the previous earliest copies we had before the Dead Sea scrolls – a gap of a 1000 years.

Excerpt:

Also on display through Dec. 31 will be three Dead Sea Scrolls, two on parchment and one on copper, on loan from the Department of Antiquities of Jordan.

The scrolls were discovered in a cave, coiled inside clay vases, by a goat herder in 1947. Excavations at the Dead Sea region later discovered about 900 scrolls in 11 caves.

Despite being safely stored in a dry container, 2,000 years took a toll on the scrolls, which were eaten away by fungi, worms and moisture. The scrolls on display, like all of the documents discovered in the find, are in fragments.

After connecting about 100,000 pieces, scholars have found that the scrolls contain biblical books, hymns, prayers and other important documents many believe were written by a Jewish sect known as the Essenes, who lived near the Dead Sea.

The find was of great historical significance because it was about 1,000 years older than any known version of the Bible, placing its authors much closer to the time of the Bible’s actual events.

Some of the scroll’s contents were published soon after their find, but for various reasons some were not released until the 1990s. The secrecy fueled speculation that the scrolls contained some sort of bombshell revelation that would contradict or significantly alter traditional biblical interpretations.

The eventual release of the scrolls seemed to prove just the opposite.

“To some degree, we didn’t know how reliable later translations of the Bible were,” said Risa Levitt Kohn, director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University and an associate professor of Hebrew Bible and Judaism in SDSU’s Religious Studies Department. Kohn said the scrolls showed that translations of the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, changed little in 2,000 years.

Peter Jones, scholar in residence and adjunct professor at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, said he studied the scrolls at Princeton University and wrote a doctoral dissertation comparing the Apostle Paul with the founder of the ancient city of Qumran, where the scrolls were discovered.

“It’s sort of amazing to see how well the text had been preserved for 1,000 years, because the text we had been using 1,000 years later can be verified by these very early texts, so that’s one good thing,” Jones said.

I don’t talk much about textual reliability on this blog, because I prefer the scientific arguments – but everybody should know this stuff. Everybody has to know how to make the case.

News

Democrat Barbara Boxer: right to be insured trumps religious liberty

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From the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

Senator Boxer warned yesterday that if the HHS contraception mandate was repealed it would set a dangerous precedence of religious rights trumping the right to be insured.

On MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Al Sharpton last night, Boxer affirmed that under the proposed amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt, an employer would not be forced by the government to pay for medical practices against his religion.

“I mean, are they serious? Sharpton exclaimed, “How do you make a law where an employer can decide his own religious beliefs violate your right to be insured?”

“Oh absolutely,” Boxer said, “Let’s use an example, let’s say somebody believes that medicine doesn’t cure anybody of a disease but prayer does and then they decide no medicine.

“No medicine!” she exclaimed, “Under the Blunt amendment, they could do just that.”

Senator Harry Reid announced yesterday that he would allow a vote on the Blunt Amendment. The vote allows Senate Democrats such as Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia to register a protest vote against the HHS contraception mandate.

Fascism is the ideology that states that the worldview of the government, especially on questions of religion, morality and meaning, should be pushed down onto individuals by force. The Democrat elites, including Obama, are pro-abortion. And now, they want to force you to be pro-abortion, too – by forcing you to subsidize the abortions of others, even if you have a conscientious objection based on your religion. Your money isn’t your money – it’s Obama’s money. You just earn it. But Obama spends it. And if he spends in subsidizing abortion, and you don’t like it, then tough luck for you. That’s how secular leftist Democrats think.