Club For Growth Turns On GOPer Who Earned 100 Percent Rating In 2010

Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt right along with his wife Vicki concedes to Jerry Moran during a watch party for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010 in Wichita, Kan. (AP Photo/Larry W. Smith)
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Former Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) can now join the list of lawmakers being attacked by the conservative Club for Growth, even though he earned extremely high scorecard marks from the group in 2009 and 2010.

“Todd Tiahrt had an atrocious record when he served in Congress,” Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller said in an email. Keller pointed to Tiahrt’s “wasteful earmark of the day,” referring to Tiahrt’s vote against cutting $150,000 of funds from an aquarium in South Carolina on Monday and his vote in opposition to cutting $2 million of funding for a site named after Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), according to The Wall Street Journal.

There’s just one thing though: Tiahrt, as the Journal noted, voted with the Club for Growth 90 percent of the time in 2009 and 100 percent of the time in 2010. But, according to Keller, that’s misleading as Tiahrt was running against Jerry Moran in the Republican primary for Senate (Moran won) and could vote against anything the Democrats, who controlled the House at the time, proposed.

Tiahrt also has a lifetime score of 85 percent from the conservative outside group FreedomWorks and an A grade from the National Rifle Association. The National Right to Life has given Tiahrt a 100 percent rating in each of Tiahrt’s terms in Congress.

Tiahrt is now trying to retake his former seat, which is now held by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R). The Club for Growth supports Pompeo (and Tiahrt has actually endorsed Pompeo in the past, two times, according to Roll Call).

“Because some liberal like Orrin Hatch or Todd Tiahrt tries to juice their stats come election time doesn’t mean they’ll vote for pro-growth policy every time, and that’s what matters,” Keller said, according to the Journal. “Todd Tiahrt’s lifetime 77 percent on the Club for Growth’s congressional scorecard pales in comparison to Mike Pompeo’s stellar 90 percent.”

The Club for Growth has not spent any money in advertising for Pompeo so far.

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