When all else fails, count on C-SPAN.

Posted on by

Man, it looks like someone put the fear of God into these conservative orgs who had been rating the voting records of members of Congress.  These ratings helped us determine whether the politician’s rhetoric was matching his or her voting record.

But if you browse to once valiant locations like Heritage Action, Club for Growth, or Conservative Review, you’ll find their voting record rating operations out-of-date and abandoned.

Never fear, though, because C-SPAN is here.

The cable giant has partnered up with the UCLA Department of Political Science and its VoteView project to give us a sense of what our electeds have really been up to.

VoteView gives us a look at aspects such as party loyalty and conservatism / liberalism in comparison to the rest of each member’s party. You can evaluate all 535 members yourself, or focus just on those from your state.

For this post, we’re going to target North Carolina’s folks in DC.  Over in the Senate, we have Thom Tillis and Ted Budd.

That’s right –  “more conservative” than 53 percent of the Senate.  (In other words, ALL of the Democrats plus a few RINOs.). But “more liberal” than 87 percent of Republicans in the Senate ???  Wow.  *That’s worse than we thought.*

More conservative than 84 percent of the Senate.  More conservative than 70 percent of Senate Republicans. That’s a decline from his ratings in the House, but he’s still a heck of a lot better than that jagoff Tillis.  Ted can do better.  

Now, let’s move over to the House.  Most of them don’t have serious competition this year.  But we do need to look at a couple of examples.

OK — “more liberal” than 57 percent of the House, but “more conservative” than 82 percent of House Democrats.

Chuck is “more conservative” than 59 percent of the House, but “more liberal” than 79 percent of House Republicans.  This guy is right there with Tillis!  He needs to join Tillis outside of elected office.  A very capable guy named Adam Smith is trying to show Edwards the door.  (As a free market guy, I have great affection for the name “Adam Smith.”  Unfortunately, there is already a Marxist from the state of Washington in Congress soiling that good name.)