On Thursday, the Washington Post fact checker gave Ron Paul two "Pinocchios" for his Michigan ad attacking Rick Santorum as a "fake conservative."
"Santorum voted to send billions of our tax dollars to dictators in North Korea and Egypt, and he even hooked Planned Parenthood up with a few million bucks. Rick Santorum, a fiscal conservative? Faaake,” the ad says.
With no additional information, one would get the impression from Ron Paul that Santorum personally went to Planned Parenthood and foreign dictators so he could hand them giant wads of cash.
That's the impression Paul wants to leave - but it's misleading.
Josh Hicks of the Washington Post explains the votes giving aid to Egypt and North Korea:
A 2010 report from the Congressional Research Service notes that Congress appropriated an average of $2 billion a year in foreign assistance to Egypt since 1979 — more than any country except Israel. That’s no surprise considering that Egypt became one of the strongest Middle East allies for the U.S. around that time, when it signed the Camp David peace accords with the Jewish state.
ProPublica provided a good summary of the funding relationship early last year. The gist is that U.S. officials considered Egypt funding vital to its military interests — for example, allowing U.S. Navy ships to enjoy expedited processing through the Suez Canal — and to maintaining a semblance of peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
As for North Korea, a report from the Congressional Research Service shows that the U.S. provided about $1 billion in assistance to North Korea between 1995 and 2008. Sixty percent of the money paid for food aid, while 40 percent went toward energy.
In 2008, the United Nations said that international food donations were vital to preventing a disaster in North Korea. The World Food Programme warned that "food shortages and hunger had worsened to levels not seen since the late 1990s,” which is about the time Santorum voted for the aid.
"It’s likely," Hicks wrote, "that Santorum voted for aid in hopes that the U.S. could persuade North Korea to abandon plans to develop nuclear weapons." Aid to that country was often given with strings attached in hopes the Communist dictatorship would dismantle its nuclear program.
While Paul disagrees with this type of foreign policy, Hicks adds that the Texas Congressman "goes a step too far" in claiming "that the only point to consider is that the money went to nations ruled by dictators."
As for funding to Planned Parenthood, Hicks notes that the bills in question also funded counter-terrorism efforts, "violent-crime reduction programs, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service."
He adds:
Six of the nine spending bills Paul’s campaign pointed to were similar: consolidated appropriations bills that involved much more than Title X funding. Paul voted no on all the measures (with the exception of a resolution that only the Senate voted on), as he has done so many times in Congress on his way to earning the nickname “Dr. No.”
Using Paul's own logic, one could just as easily say he opposes counter-terrorism and the FBI.
Santorum, however, is not completely off the hook. Hicks also examined the former Senator's record and found that the "National Taxpayers Union graded Santorum a B+, lower than his GOP primary rivals." He did score higher than most of his GOP colleagues for more than half of his time in the Senate, however.
He notes:
The Club for Growth ranked Santorum as the 35th most conservative Senator, well below most of his fellow Republicans, during the candidate’s last year in office in 2005 — although the scorecard takes into account other factors besides fiscal policy, such as trade, regulation and tort reform.
The Club for Growth also said Santorum "has a mixed record and showed clear signs of varying his votes based on the election calendar,” and said that “his record is plagued by the big-spending habits that Republicans adopted during the Bush years of 2001-2006.”
Hicks wrote that Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley shot back, saying Paul "has no room to speak about fiscal conservatism, considering his habit of inserting earmarks into bills and then voting against them, only to see the bills pass — an apparent attempt to keep his record clean."
“The last person I’m going to take a lecture from on spending is Ron Paul – the number four earmarker in all of Congress,” he said.
In December, the Post gave Paul three "Pinocchios" for suggesting that he never supported earmarks. Three "Pinocchios" means the statement or claim contains "[s]ignificant factual error and/or obvious contradictions."
Hicks gave Paul two "Pinocchios" for this ad, explaining:
Paul can find legitimate ways to attack Santorum’s fiscal record without resorting to mischaracterizations about the candidate’s votes for consolidated appropriations bills. He earns two Pinocchios for suggesting his opponent’s intention was to support ruthless dictators or abortion.
According to the Post's scale, the rating means:
Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.
The rating system has a maximum rating of four "Pinocchios," meaning the statement is a "whopper."
Earlier this week, we reported that Politifact rated this ad "half true," for suggesting that Santorum doubled the funding to the Department of Education.
More on Ron Paul at Examiner.com can be found here.
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