Rick Santorum is regarded by many of his supporters as the “real” conservative in the GOP presidential race, and most Democrats pay him the unintended compliment of considering him an arch-conservative. Undoubtedly, Santorum is a conservative of a certain type, but how far to the right was his voting record during the three terms he spent in the United States Senate?

To answer this question, I went to the American Conservative Union’s ratings archive for 2006, Santorum’s last year as a senator, and looked up the lifetime ratings of those who were in the Senate at that time. One could debate voting records endlessly, but most observers consider the ACU’s ratings to be a reliable and objective index of where a senator or congressman fits on the political spectrum.

In 2006, there were 50 Republican senators. (Jumping Jim Jeffords switched parties somewhere in that time frame; I counted him as a Democrat. The ladies from Maine, of course, counted as Republicans.) Santorum’s lifetime ACU rating as of 2006 was 88.1. That is a pretty good rating, but Santorum was not one of the most conservative senators. On the contrary: while 20 Republicans had voting records that the ACU rated as more liberal than Santorum’s, 26 had voting records that were more conservative. Four Republican senators had ratings with one percent of Santorum’s, which I regarded as equivalent.

Thus, by this measure, Santorum was actually in the more moderate half of Republican senators during his years in that body. Bob Dole had a more conservative lifetime voting record; so did Trent Lott, John Sununu, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, and Orrin Hatch, who is now facing a Tea Party challenge in Utah. Bill Frist, not generally known as a fire-eater, had a record almost exactly as conservative as Santorum’s, at 87.8.

The explanation for these numbers is evident: while Santorum was a reliably conservative senator on social issues, he was not very conservative, for a Republican, on economic and fiscal issues. All of the four remaining contenders in the GOP presidential field are conservatives, but they are conservatives of different stripes. It is not accurate to describe Santorum as the most conservative of the four, or as the only “real” conservative in the group.

Rick Santorum’s Senate voting record:

What A Big Government Conservative Looks Like

NEA
Voted for taxpayer funding of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Voted against a 10% cut in the budget for National Endowment for the Arts.

Bankruptcy
Voted for a Schumer amendment to make the debts of pro-life demonstrators not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Defense and Foreign Policy

Voted for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Voted against requiring the President to certify that the CWC is effectively verifiable.

Voted against requiring the President to certify that that Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, China, and all other countries determined to be state sponsors of terror have joined CWC prior to submitting the instrument of ratification.

Voted for the START II Treaty.
Voted to allow the sale of supercomputers to China.
Voted to ban anti-personnel landmines.
Voted against increasing defense spending offset by equivalent cuts in non-defense spending.
Voted to require that Federal bureaucrats get the same pay raises as uniformed military.
Voted to allow food and medicine sales to state sponsors of terror and tyrannical regimes such as Libya and Cuba.
Voted to limit the President’s authority to impose sanctions on nations for reasons of national security unless the sanctions were approved by a multilateral regime.
Voted against requiring Congressional authorization for military action in Bosnia.
Voted to give $25 million in foreign aid to North Korea.
Voted to weaken alien terrorist deportation provisions. If the Court determines that the evidence must be withheld for national security reasons, the Justice Department must still provide a summary of the evidence sufficient for the alien terrorist to mount a defense against deportation.
Voted against delaying the India Nuclear until the President certified that India had agreed to suspend military-to-military exchanges with Iran.
Voted against the Conventional Trident Missile Program.

Nominations

Voted for Richard Paez to the 9th Curcuit (cloture).
Voted for Sonia Sotomayor, Circuit Judge.
Voted for Richard Holbrooke to be Ambassador to the UN.
Voted for Margaret Morrow to be District Judge.
Voted twice for Marsha Berzon to the 9thg Circuit.
Voted for Mary McLaughlin to be District Judge.
Voted for Tim Dyk to be District Judge.
Voted for James Brady to be District Judge.

Labor

Voted against National Right to Work Act.
Voted against repeal of Davis-Bacon Prevailing union wages.
Voted for Alexis Herman to be Secretary of Labor.
Voted for mandatory Federal child care funding.
Voted for Trade Adjustment Assistance.
Voted for Job Corps funding.
Voted twice in support of Fedex Unionization.
Voted against allowing a waiver of Davis-Bacon in emergency situations.
Voted for minimum wage increases six times here here here here here and here.
Voted to require a union representative on an IRS oversight board.
Voted to exempt IRS union representatives from criminal ethics laws.
Voted against creating independent Board of Governors to investigate IRS abuses.

Guns

Voted to require pawn shops to do background checks on people who pawn a gun.
Voted twice to make it illegal to sell a gun without a secure storage or safety device.
Voted for a Federal ban on possession of “assault weapons” by those under 18.
Voted for Federal funding for anti-gun education programs in schools.
Voted for anti-gun juvenile justice bill.

Reform

Voted for funding for the legal services corporation.
Voted twice for a Congressional pay raise.
Voted to impose a uniform Federal mandate on states to force them to allow convicted rapists, arsonists, drug kingpins, and all other ex-convicts to vote in Federal elections.
Voted for the Specter “backup plan” to allow campaign finance reform to survive if portions of the bill were found unconstitutional.
Voted to mandate discounted broadcast times for politicians.
Voted for a McCain amendment to require state and local campaign committees to report all campaign contributions to the FEC and to require all campaign contributions to be reported to the FEC within 24 hours within 90 days of an election.

Immigration

Voted against increasing the number of immigration investigators.
Voted to allow illegal immigrants to receive the earned income credit before becoming citizens.
Voted to give SSI benefits to legal aliens.
Voted to give welfare benefits to naturalized citizens without regard to the earnings of their sponsors.
Voted against hiring an additional 1,000 border patrol agents, paid for by reductions in state grants.

Taxes

Voted against a flat tax.
Voted to increase tobacco taxes to pay for Medicare prescription drugs.
Voted to increase tobacco taxes to fund health insurance subsidies for small businesses.
Voted to increase tobacco taxes to pay for an $8 billion increase in child healh insurance.
Voted to increase tobacco taxes to pay for an increase in NIH funding.
Voted twice for internet taxes.
Voted to allow gas tax revenues to be used to subsidize Amtrak.
Voted to strike marriage penalty tax relief and instead provide fines on tobacco companies.
Voted against repealing the Clinton 4.3 cent gas tax increase.
Voted to increase taxes by $2.3 billion to pay for an Amtrak trust fund.
Voted to allow welfare to a minor who had a child out of wedlock and who resided with an adult who was on welfare within the previous two years.
Voted to increase taxes by $9.4 billion to pay for a $9.4 billion increase in student loans.
Voted to say that AMT patch is more important than capital gains and dividend relief.

Welfare

Voted against food stamp reform.
Voted against Medicaid reform.
Voted against TANF reform.
Voted to increase the Social Services Block Grant from $1 billion to $2 billion.
Voted to increase the FHA loan from $170,000 to $197,000. Also opposed increasing GNMA guaranty from 6 basis points to 12.
Voted for $2 billion for low income heating assistance.

Waste

Sponsored an amendment to increase Amtrak funds by $550 million.
Voted to use HUD funds for the Joslyn Art Museum (NE), the Stand Up for Animals project (RI) and the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Project (WA).
Voted to increase spending on social programs by $7 billion.
Voted to increase NIH funding by $1.6 billion.
Voted to increase NIHnding by $700 million.
Voted to for a $2 million earmark to renovate the Vulcan Monument (AL).
Voted for a $1 billion bailout for the steel industry.
Voted against requiring that highway earmarks would come out of a state’s highway allocation.
Voted to allow Market Access Program funds to go to foreign companies.
Voted to allow OPIC to increase its administrative costs by 50%.
Voted against transferring $20 million from AmeriCorps to veterans.
Voted for the $140 billion asbestos compensation bill.
Voted against requiring a uniform medical criteria to ensure asbestos claims were legitimate.
Voted to increase community development programs by $2 billion.

Spending and Entitlements

Voted to make Medicare part B premium subsidies a new entitlement.
Voted against paying off the debt ($5.6 trillion at the time) within 30 years.
Voted to give $18 billion to the IMF.
Voted to raid Social Security instead of using surpluses to pay down the debt.

Health Care

Voted to allow states to impose health care mandates that are stricter than proposed new Federal mandates, but not weaker.
Voted twice for Federal mental health parity mandates in health insurance.
Voted against allowing consumers the option to purchase a plan outside the parity mandate.

Education

Voted to increase Federal funding for teacher testing.
Voted to increase spending for the Department of Education by $3.1 billion.
Voted against requiring courts to consider the impact of IDEA awards on a local school district.

Energy

Voted to allow the President to designate certain sites as interim nuclear waste storage sites in the event that he determines that Yucca Mountain is not a suitable site for a permanent waste repository. Those sites are as follows: the nuclear waste site in Hanford, Washington; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; Barnwell County, South Carolina; and the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.

Voted to make fuel price gouging a Federal crime.

His statement is a fair assessment, unlike post #5, which only cherry picks the worst parts of the 12% of Rick Santorum's record when he didn't vote with conservatives.

Still, it is unfair to compare his voting record to people like Lindsay Graham and Bob Dole, both of whom represented reliable conservative constituencies. Santorum never had that luxury.

Rick Santorum is a 100% reliable social conservative and about an 80% reliable economic conservative. Given where he came from, I don't know how we can realistically expect to elect anything better. I will take Rick Santorum's occasional lapse of faith on a union issue any day over John McCain's or Lindsay Graham's 100% affection for the illegal alien lobby, which is nothing more than the modern pro-slavery lobby when you exclude the clearly racists and anti-American elements.

For some strange reason, a few southern conservatives still have a certain inexplicable nostalgia for the days of slavery. Those of us in the north do not.

Seven reasons for Rick Santorum

Who has won the most states without the benefit of their own money, last election's organization or a billionaire casino sugar daddy?
Who is everybody's second choice when he isn't their first?
Who can get both the Romney people and the Gingrich people, who hate each other, to vote for him?
Who has the best record on immigration?
Who has the best plan for repealing ObamaCare? And is the only GOP candidate who didn't help write or approve legislation which helped spawn this fiasco?
Who has the best plan for expanding the American economy and strengthening American families?
Who is the closest thing we have to the "generic Republican" which polls show consistently beating Obama and is most likely to make the election about Obama's sorry record rather than about himself?

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