Rhetoric vs. record

The treasurer would be doing fine if it wasn’t for that pesky record of his.

When he opened his Quincy campaign office last month, Cahill told supporters, “We’re avoiding all of these special interests, and we’re going right to the people.’’

But for a man of the people, Cahill sure seems cozy with those other guys. According to a report in Sunday’s Globe, he has accepted mountains of campaign contributions from donors connected to investment firms that handle Treasury money.

Now, taking money from people who earn millions doing business with him isn’t illegal, though it ought to be, and Cahill told me yesterday that the donors got nothing in return. Nonetheless, this is not exactly the M.O. of a guy who is a truly independent alternative to political business as usual.

That’s not the only thing about Cahill that lacks authenticity lately.

He’s been working hard to raise his national profile, telling a gaggle of delighted conservative talk-show hosts that despite credible, independent analysis to the contrary, Massachusetts’s four-year-old health care overhaul is a “disastrous’’ bust that has “nearly bankrupted the state’’ and that the whole country will be down the tubes in four years if it follows his state’s example.

Cahill insisted yesterday that his sudden sky-is-falling rhetoric has nothing to do with the fact that donations from his usual sources have dried up: He said he is not courting the Fox viewers who flocked to US Senator Scott Brown’s cause.

“It wasn’t calculated for political impact,’’ Cahill said. “I’m as surprised by the response as you all are.’’

But the treasurer didn’t speak out against health care reform when it was introduced in 2006. Though he has warned against overspending in general over the past two years, he never came close to his recent alarmist pronouncements. And according to yesterday’s story by my colleague, Frank Phillips, there was not a peep from him on the subject as recently as a few weeks ago, when he gave bond rating agencies the impression that all was hunky-dory with the state’s finances.

When reporters asked him earlier this week why he hadn’t objected four years ago, Cahill said nobody had asked him then.

That response is almost as lame as the one Cahill gave last month when the Globe asked him to suggest specific ways to close the budget deficit. “I don’t have enough insight into the budget,’’ said the state treasurer — the state treasurer! — who is running on a platform of fiscal responsibility.

When I talked to him yesterday, Cahill said everybody has missed the nuance of his position on health care reform: He does not believe the overhaul will bankrupt Massachusetts “in and of itself, but only if we weren’t getting significant federal reimbursement to prop the plan up.’’

A comet would ruin us, too, but that’s only slightly less likely than federal support drying up. In fact, the health care legislation just signed by President Obama actually increases federal payments to the state.

A lot of voters are looking for the kind of gubernatorial candidate Cahill claims to be. They are desperate for a truly independent outsider who isn’t tied to special interests, a fiscal expert who can reform state finances, a person whose beliefs are long-held, and heartfelt.

It’s becoming clear that the Tim Cahill we’ve gotten to know better this week is not that guy.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.