Club For Growth: Foxx, Meadows, Jones MOST conservative NCGOPers in House for 2014
Each year, you have all kinds of groups ranking members of Congress according to their voting records. The Club For Growth, for instance, champions the concepts of limited government and fiscal conservatism. That organization ranks members of the House and Senate from 1 to 435 — best to worst — according to how well they adhere to those concepts. (A #1 ranking makes you an ideal conservative on fiscal issues, while a #435 ranking makes you a complete commie.)
Michigan’s Justin Amash (R) is the Club’s top choice for 2014. They’ve ranked him #1, with Jeff Duncan (R) of South Carolina coming in a close second. You have to look down the list all the way to #31 before you see your first Tar Heel pol — Virginia Foxx.
Mark Meadows (R-NC-11) comes in at #37, with Walter Jones coming in close behind at #39. George Holding followed at #43 and Robert Pittenger tailed him at #48.
Patrick McHenry, also the House’s chief deputy whip, came in at #65, and his buddy Richard Hudson came in close behind at #68.
Howard Coble finished up his career with a #154 ranking, while Renee Ellmers rounded out the group at a dismal #173 ranking.
Over in the Senate, Richard Burr came in at #21 of the 100 members of that body. Kay Hagan finished her career in that body ranked #67. For South Carolina, Tim Scott (R) was ranked #10, and Lindsey Graham was ranked #35.
Here are the key votes used to compile the rankings for House members. Here are the key votes used for the Senate rankings.
Virginia Foxx voted for Boehner, she voted for cloture on the recent DHS/Obama immigration bill, and she has been one of the most vocal advocates of renewing/expanding No Child Left Behind. There is no way that she is more conservative than NC champions Walter Jones and Mark Meadows. Club for Growth must be using “selective” criteria for their rankings…
This rating was for votes cast in 2014. Foxx would have been rated down for the CRomnibus vote, but the Boehner vote is in 2015 and the renewal of No Child Elft Behind has not even happened yet. Those will impact the 2015 ratings.
But I agree with you generally about Foxx. I trust Jones and Meadows a heck of a lot more than I do her. But Jones and Meadows tied at 88% and Foxx was only two points higher at 90%
Foxx voted for the $1.1 trillion Cromnibus that funded Obama’s executive amnesty. She voted for Boehner against the will of her constituents . She supports the failed Bush-era No Child Left behind policy and wrote an op-ed for Breitbart in support of HR5 that re-authorized it. She most recently voted Nay on the motion to table the Senate amendment to HR240 – meaning she voted to get the clean DHS bill to the House floor for a vote when she had the opportunity to stop it. She is culpable, once again, for funding Obama’s illegal amnesty. She voted against the final bill, but getting it to the floor for a vote means she supports funding his amnesty. She is hardly conservative.
What is important to consider are the percenetages each voted conservative. Foxx did so on 90% of the key votes, Jones and Meadows tied at 88% each. Ellmers brought up the rear with 51%
The Club for Growth’s PAC is a big player in primaries, so these nujmbers ought to encourage their interest in the primary challenge to Ellmers.
In other words, Ellmers is about as close to being a Democrat as one can get and still have an R next to her name.
I am completely confused about Renee Ellmers with 51%. There are TV commercials on daily telling us how conservative she is in Washington. Surely someone is not honest so why would the Club for Growth lie about Renee? Please help me understand
You are talking about the ads from the American Action Network, a pro-amnesty liberal Republican outfit chaired by moderate liberal former establishment US Senator Norm Coleman, which is attacking conservative congressmen for voting against funding Obama’s amnesty and calling pro-amnesty congressmen ”conservative”. A number of close Boehner and McConnell allies are also involved with AAN, as is Fred Malek, the son of a notorious Nixon operative of the same name..
http://www.redstate.com/2015/03/03/fred-malek-and-john-boehner-declare-war-on-conservative-congressmen/
Here is a good article on how some of these phony groups operate:
http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-NEWS-and-COMMENTARY-c-2015-03-11-277222.112112-Beware-of-counterfeit-conservatives-groups.html
Anyone who votes for Boehner cannot be conservative. It
appears that Virginia Foxs has been bought and paid for. As
for Renee Elmers, she had a fairly conservative voting record
her first year, but what she is doing now leaves me cold. In fact most of the Republicans who have been in office for a while all
leave me cold. I say, vote them out after two terms.
The methodology of any rating is to first pick key votes during a certain time period, usually a year that shown a clear distinction between liberals and conservatives, then tally how everyone voted and do the math. Sometimes there are surprises when someone votes one way a lot on the highest profile issues, but then often votes the other way on the lower profile issues. That can give a score higher or lower than what one would generally expect. Some rating groups try to adjust for this by double or even triple weighting the most important votes while others do not.
Personally, given that often the procedural vote (for the rule in the House, on cloture in the Senate) is really the key vote on a bill because it offers the best place to stop it, I would like to see rating groups rate on both the procedural vote and the final vote. That would expose all the phonies (and Richard Burr and Lindsay Graham are serial offenders) who would for the bill before they vote against it. They vote for it on the procedural vote where it could have been stopped, then against it on the final vote where there is no chance to stop it, and then crow that they opposed the bill. Burr has been censured by three NC Congressional District GOP organizations for doing this.
I am a former supporter of Virginia Foxx. Unfortunately she has changed since the Boehner gang took over. I DO NOT support anyone who votes for Boehner. She has sold us out. Walter B.Jones is the sole conservative voice representing NC and the rest may as well stay home because they have swallowed the poison Boehner placed in their minds. If we continue with the do nothing RINOS (Most Republicans) and the very focused DEMS (ALL of them) we will slide off the slippery slope very soon. We need to recall ALL of the Senators who vote even once with the Democrats (if they were elected as Republicans). The message must be loud and clear about what we the people want. As we say in Eastern NC “No Quarter!”