Sarah Palin has endorsed Carly Fiorina for U.S. Senate in California, showing commendable charity toward a woman who gave her one of her many Bad Headline Days in September 2008 by telling an interviewer that Palin wouldn’t be qualified to run a major company. (Fiorina did add, “But you know what? That’s not what she’s running for.”)


Palin is way off base, though, when she writes:

I support Carly as she fights through a tough primary against a liberal member of the GOP who seems to bear almost no difference to Boxer, one of the most leftwing members of the Senate.

Ignoring conservative Chuck DeVore, who probably has the support of a lot of Palin fans, Palin is taking aim at frontrunning former congressman Tom Campbell. But if her aim was that far off on a moose hunt, she’d come back empty-handed. Tom Campbell is often described as a moderate Republican, and sometimes as a (moderately) libertarian Republican. But he’s certainly no liberal, and it’s just nuts to say that he’s no different from Barbara Boxer. Here are the ratings that Boxer and Campbell received from various rating organizations in 2000, the last year they were both in Congress:

Campbell Boxer
Americans for Democratic Action 20 85
Republican Liberty Caucus 79.5 16
American Conservative Union 64 4
National Taxpayers Union 73 (21st in House) 14 (73rd in Senate)
Campbell’s record isn’t perfect from either a conservative or a libertarian perspective. But anybody who can look at the respective records of Tom Campbell and Barbara Boxer and see “almost no difference” needs new glasses.