More Liberal Than a Clinton!

I can't say that I was totally shocked by this news, but if you had asked me to name Senators more liberal than Hillary Clinton back in 2007, I would have been stumped (outside of Ted Kennedy, that is). Lucky for people like me, the National Journal has the facts:

"Overall in NJ's 2007 ratings, Obama voted the liberal position on 65 of the 66 key votes on which he voted; Clinton voted the liberal position 77 of 82 times. Obama garnered perfect liberal scores in both the economic and social categories. His score in the foreign-policy category was nearly perfect, pulled down a notch by the only conservative vote that he cast in the ratings, on a Republican-sponsored resolution expressing the sense of Congress that funding should not be cut off for U.S. troops in harm's way. The Senate passed the resolution 82-16 with the support of both Obama and Clinton. The 16 opponents included mostly liberals, such as Sens. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Sanders. "

Obama's "composite liberal score" was 95.5, compared to Clinton's 82.8. That seems like a pretty sizeable difference to me. So I wanted to compare it to a few Republicans - unfortunately, data was limited (either the candidate wasn't in the Congress - such as Romney - or wasn't present for enough votes to qualify for the composite score - such as McCain). So I was able to look over the "lifetime" scores for McCain (71.8), Chuck Hagel (71.5), and Ron Paul (51.7)... although, truth be told, over the last 5 years McCain is 57.9 and Paul is 41.9, which are solid Conservative figures.

Obama's score indicated that he was the most liberal Congressman in 2007. Anybody remember that embarrasment of a Presidential candidate named John Kerry? He was the most liberal Congressman in 2003 - apparently, in order to run for President as a Democrat, you have to run hard to the left before the primaries. Good thing they don't cater to extremists over there.

What did I conclude? First, that Obama scares the living heck out of me with his liberal voting record. Second, why wasn't McCain around to cast enough votes to qualify for the ranking? Third (and finally), I am praying for a repeat of 2004, when America stiff-armed the most liberal Congressman and forced him to retreat home (to his multi-millionaire wife, cushy Senate job, and all of the other liberal "thought leaders").

To think that Hillary was only the 16th most liberal person in Congress in 2007... wow.

-- Submitted by R Wellesley