David S. Bernstein, who has taken over the Boston Phoenix Talking Politics blog, notices the Club for Growth Congressional Scorecard for 2005 and 2006. The Club for Growth, for those of you who don’t follow the ravings of vicious, lying, selfish, nasty, horrible, vile ... damn, where was I? Oh, right. The Club for Growth supports “economic freedom”, by which they mean, well:
- Making the Bush tax cuts permanent
- Death tax repeal
- Cutting and limiting government spending
- Social Security reform with personal retirement accounts
- Expanding free trade
- Legal reform to end abusive lawsuits
- Replacing the current tax code
- School choice
- Regulatory reform and deregulation
I’m being fair and using their language. The purpose of the CfG appears to be to influence public policy by keeping Republicans on message, sometimes by funding primary challenges to Republican incumbents who are too moderate, such as Lincoln Chafee or Arlen Specter. They put out a press release this week saying that John McCain’s “overall record is tainted by a marked antipathy towards the free market and individual freedom.” Yep, Senator McCain hates freedom. Not enough of a banker’s buddy for CfG. Just to show you who we’re dealing with.
Well, naturally, I looked up a few people in the scorecard. Remember, here, that the “methodology” of the scorecard involves, as far as I can tell, making sure that the right Republicans show up in the right places, and then seeing where everybody else fits in. So the list should be taken with ... well, perhaps it shouldn’t be taken at all, but I’m going to, anyway. Now, where 100 indicates a CfG thumbs-up, and 0 indicates freedom-hating communism, let’s see who is where...
My Junior Senator, who was a Democrat in 2006, comes up nicely liberal at a great big One out of CfG’s hundred. Not bad, eh? Hard to beat? Try my other Senator, Chris Dodd, who happens to be running for President of the United States. That’s right, Senator Dodd was tied with Senators Akaka, Boxer, Byrd, Dayton, Durban, Feinstein, Harkin, Jeffords, Lautenberg, Leahy, Menendez, Mikulski, Reed, Sarbanes, Wyden and Edward M. Kennedy at a nice round Zero. Whoo! Hoo! The Zero club! Come on, Gentle Readers, my combined Senatorial score for 2006 is One. Add to that Rep. Larson’s Nine, for a three-way total of Ten. Beat that! Oh, fine, hibiscus has Seven, but that’s cheating. Anybody reading this in my old district MA-9, with Nine (Kerry=4, Lynch=5)? How low can you go?
All right, fine. Other than Sen. Dodd, how are the Presidential candidates lining up? Well, there’s Joe Biden with One, which isn’t bad. There’s Barack Obama with Seven. There’s Hilary Clinton with Eight. Eight doesn’t seem bad, does it? Pretty damn liberal, right? There are five Dems in the teens and then there’s Sen. Nelson with 25, and the other Sen. Nelson with 49 and that’s it for the Dems. So Hilary Clinton is incredibly far left, according to the Club for Growth—just not quite as socialist as thirty-seven other Senators.
How about those Republicans? John McCain, noted freedom-hater, still turns out a tidy 76 on the scale, three points less socialist than Bill Frist. I kid you not. Senator Collins is a conspicuously pink 22, and Senator Snowe is downright red at 9. Er, not that red, the other one. Have fun with those primaries, Downeasters. Lincoln Chafee earned their ire with a 27, and a chastened Arlen Specter tied with Sen. Voinovich with 40.
In 2005, we had twenty Senators in the Zero Club, including Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden. Senator Dodd was a big Two, Sen. Lieberman a Three, and Rep. Larson a Six for a total of Eleven. Feh. On the other hand, Diane Feinstein picked up a juicy 14, making the San Francisco Value a Seventeen. MA-9 wins that one with a Five. Springfield IL had a nice round Zero, with Lane Evans, as did their neighbors in Evanston, Skokie and Des Plaines and the Chicagoans in Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s 9th, and also the residents of Long Beach and Compton (CA) who are represented by Juanita Millender-McDonald, and the residents of Hoboken, Weehawken and Perth Amboy who rejoiced in Bob Menendez before his appointment to the Senate. Did I mention that Dennis Kucinich got a Zero in 2005, and a Seven in 2006? Must remember he’s running again.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
i love this: Absences are not counted against a member, though we reserve the right to do so in the future if, in our judgment, an absence was used to duck taking a position.
yes! yes! all rights not explicitly claimed by the individual are surrendered! that’s the kind of freedom i like.
Enh, rats. I pick up a tidy zero for both my senators, but Rep. Al Wynn is insufficiently pinko, so i wind up with a disappointing 16 total. :>(
I thought this would be a cakewalk for my district, given that Boxer and DiFi are both in the Zero Club; but, oddly, Rep. Eshoo has a score of 13. Perhaps because she supports high tech companies? Not sure.