Confirmation Bias on Porkbusting

Just a day after my last anti-porkbusting post, I am come across an example which only serves to confirm my preexisting belief. The Reason blog directs me to a story on a Politico blog about the targeting of an anti-war Republican by the conservative group The Club for Growth.

Of course, the Club for Growth does not pitch the story this way. In their press release, The Club cites several achievements of their endorsed challenger, Andy Harris, and several poor votes from the incumbent, Wayne Gilchrest. They also note that Gilchrest came in 212th on their 2006 scorecard. First of all, I would be immediately skeptical of any scoring system that places 25 Congressmen and 20 Senators above Ron Paul. And there is the fact that Gilchrest actually authored one of the pro-growth bills used in the scoring mechanism.

But let us leave those issues aside and take The Club's word for it that Gilchrest is "one of the most economically liberal Republicans" (though note that there are still at least 22 Republicans scoring lowering that Gilchrest for The Club to throw money behind). There is another issue that these two Republicans clearly disagree on: the Iraq War. Specifically, the incumbent Gilchrest is against it. The War is not at all mentioned in The Club's press release, and that makes sense as it is not one of the issues they claim to take a side on (although they have passed along pro-war propaganda on their blog).

My main point, however, is not to accuse the The Club for Growth and other conservative organizations of a deliberate campaign to support pro-war candidates by draping them in "fiscal restraint" garb (but it wouldn't surprise me of some were doing just this). Rather, it is that they are missing the boat on government spending. The Iraq War, and the entire Defense/Homeland Security apparatus, are the real fiscal problems bloating the budget to the tune of $1 trillion per year (see my previous posts for elaboration). And pork/earmarking, as loathsome of a practice as it is, is not the problem with the budget, constituting less than 0.5% of the federal budget. Either these porkbusting groups have their facts wrong, are willfully deceived, or they are purposively deceiving voters (shocking, I know!). In the end, the result is the same: more wars, but plenty of fiddling about non-existent pork.