Club for Growth: Renee’s a RINO

Posted on by

 

Boy.  File this under things we would have liked to have seen prior to May 8.

The Club For Growth, a political action committee which aims to elect free-market conservatives to Congress, has released a report on the freshman GOP Members of Congress entitled “Just How Tea Party Are They?”

Freshman Republicans were ranked from 1 (most liberal) to 100 (ideal conservative).   The lowest ranked freshman Republicans got scores of 42.  A few freshmen actually got scores of 100.  North Carolina’s lone GOP freshman Renee Ellmers received a ranking of 59 out of 100. 

In South Carolina, Mick Mulvaney received  a 99 ranking.  Jeff Duncan got a 97.  Trey Gowdy got a 97 and Tim Scott got a 92.

In their vote study, the organization wrote:

In the 2010 election, 87 freshmen House Republicans came to Washington pledging fealty to the Tea Party movement and the ideals of limited government and economic freedom. The mainstream media likes to say that the freshman class is the most uncompromising group of fiscal conservatives in history…but just how Tea Party are they? Did all 87 freshmen always vote to cut spending and limit the size of government, or did some of them vote like the big-spending R.I.N.Os of the past?

This study was compiled from the Club for Growth’s Congressional Scorecard, which evaluates lawmakers based upon their commitment to limited government and pro-growth policies. What we found was that while some freshmen have lived up to the promises they made to the tea party movement, dozens of them are big-spenders and are no different from many of the veteran Republicans they serve with.

While the rhetoric of the freshmen may be loud, the Club for Growth strives to hold lawmakers accountable by examining how they actually voted once they got to Congress. In many cases, the rhetoric of the so-called “Tea Party” freshmen simply didn’t match their records.

So, for Renee, that’s a 63 from The Heritage Foundation and a 59 from The Club For Growth.  In the classes I teach, those are failing grades.