"He's a Democrat, dammit! Why can't you people see that!" (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)



"He's a Democrat, dammit! Why can't you people see that!" (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)



Romney told the small audience he had run "four enterprises" and could better attack Washington's ballooning federal debt than Santorum. "During his time in the senate, only two terms, the size of the federal government grew 80 percent," Romney said. "When Republicans go to Washington and spend like Democrats, you're going to have a lot of spending." Romney said that unlike Santorum, he was a "budget hawk."

This is pretty much the same lame garbage Romney was spewing last week in Idaho, and he's going to have a hard time convincing conservatives that it's true, not just because it's hard to trust anything Mitt Romney says, but also because conservatives strongly approve of Rick Santorum's fiscal record.

But even though Mitt Romney is full of crap when he accuses Rick Santorum of being a Democrat on fiscal policy, it is true that Rick Santorum supported the policies that created the long-term fiscal problem we face today. And so does Mitt Romney, because those policies are the Republican policies that President George W. Bush put in place: irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy, a wasteful war in Iraq, and a disastrous financial regulatory environment that led to the worst recession since the Great Depression—and a corresponding dramatic decrease in tax revenue.

Democrats are by no means perfect, and too much of what Bush Republicans put in place remains in effect. But by and large, if Democrats had gotten their way in the first place we wouldn't be facing the challenges we face today. And that's something that neither Mitt Romney nor Rick Santorum will ever accept. Instead, they'll make absurd accusations about how the other one is a Democrat in disguise.