National Tea Party and conservative groups are not buying a recent radio ad by Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold claiming to be “tough on government spending.”
In a release about Feingold’s “Penny Pincher” ad, Talking Points Memo reported, his campaign listed a number conservative groups — some heavily involved in the Tea Party movement — that have said positive things about him, like Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks and Club for Growth.
But don’t take those words as any type of endorsement of his voting in Congress, some of those groups say.
“Feingold is not a fiscal conservative,” said Max Pappas, the vice president for public policy at FreedomWorks. “He’s an incumbent who is a key part of Washington’s spending problem.”
“Feingold lost any credibility he may have had as a fiscal conservative when he voted for the nearly trillion dollar ‘stimulus’ bill and the multi-trillion dollar ObamaCare bill that dramatically expanded the entitlement system we already can’t afford,” Pappas said.
Feingold is in his third term as senator and is facing a tough re-election battle, likely from GOP nominee Ron Johnson.
Michael Connolly, the communications director for Club for Growth, said Feingold is telling the truth about being the “top-scoring Democrat” in 2007 in terms of eliminating pork-barrel spending, and being tied with or scoring “better than 39 Republican senators” in that regard. But he’s still a “devout liberal” who voted for Obama’s health-care bill.
“He may be trying to save millions, but he’s about to waste trillions,” he said of Feingold’s vote.