(George) Allen goes long in repackaging record

[underpants]

Richmond, Va. --
George Allen has been a lot of things: interception-prone college quarterback, on-again, off-again lawyer, front man for Big Oil, career politician. But revisionist historian?

Coveting the votes of tea parties in his comeback attempt for U.S. Senate, Allen is blurring the line between shameless ambition and ambitious shamelessness.

Perhaps rattled by a reception at the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention that ranged from respectful curiosity to he's-so-yesterday contempt, Allen is trying to blunt issues that are setting him wrong with the right and could mean trouble with the middle, where elections are decided.

In a lengthy post on his website this past Tuesday, Allen depicted himself as a longtime anti-tax, anti-government, anti-deficit guy -- a tea partier "before it was cool." The image doesn't quite comport with the reality.

Allen bulled a Democratic legislature into junking parole for fixed sentences, an initiative requiring a rapid expansion of prisons financed, not with cash, but the taxpayer's credit card: debt-backed, interest-paying bonds.

And in lopping the payroll by about 10,000, Allen -- with the complicity of both parties -- crafted a program that actually drove up spending.

For example, the road department's bridge-inspection office was wiped out by buyouts. The agency was forced to hire back -- as private contractors -- inspectors who had received golden handshakes or fattened pensions. In other words: some people were being paid three times for one day's work.

Allen's shtick in Washington recalled his inconsistencies in Richmond.

Allen helped inflate the deficit by backing the Medicaid drug benefit, a blank check for two wars and income-tax cuts that even some Republicans say, if extended, might have to be limited to the middle class.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/oct/24/jeff24-ar-582751/