Carly Fiorina’s conservatism notwithstanding, Chuck DeVore is bound and determined to make the contest for the opportunity to defeat perhaps the most partisan U.S. Senator one between a conservative and liberal Republican.  To do that, his campaign has had to twist the former HP CEO’s positions so they match those of Dede Scozzafava.

Only problem is that the Carly has made clear she opposes many of the policies DeVore says she supports.  In a press release yesterday, his campaign said, “Carly Fiorina supported the Obama stimulus.” In fact, she made her opposition to that budget-busting boondoggle crystal clear. He says she can’t decide whether or not “she opposes cap-and-tax.” The week she announced for U.S. Senate, she called the bill a “job killer for small businesses [and] farmers.”   Last week, she repeated this description of the legislation on the Kudlow Report, saying she would not vote for the bill.

Look, it’s entirely fair to criticize Carly for the stands she has taken.  I, for example, have taken issue with her for voting for Proposition 8.  But, the DeVore campaign, in its eagerness to make this a liberal versus conservative race, has made claims about their rival that could be dismissed with a couple of keystrokes.  Simply put, they’re not doing their homework.

And while Devore suggests Carly has equivocated on Obamacare, she has said she is “adamantly opposed” to both the House (Pelosi) and Senate (Reid) legislation to overhaul our healthcare system. Indeed, she slammed Barbara Boxer’s vote to open debate on the latter bill, saying that Ma’am “put partisan politics over the interests of the people of California. This $2.5 trillion bill creates a government-run healthcare bureaucracy that will increase taxes and not improve the quality of healthcare for Californians.”  That ain’t no equivocation.

The race for the GOP nomination to take on the spendthrift Mrs. Boxer is not a contest between a mainstream conservative and a liberal Republican, but between two conervatives with different backgrounds and different appeals.

If elected, neither would vote to increase the size of government and limit our freedoms.   Each candidate would better serve our state than has Barbara Boxer.  The real issue is which one is better suited to defeating her.

Should DeVore win the GOP nomination and misrepresent Boxer’s record as he has misrepresented Carly’s, the better-funded Boxer attack machine would make mincemeat of him.   And that machine would have the support not just of the Democratic Party, but of the California media.

The issue would not be Boxer’s record, but DeVore’s competence.