Jon Henke over at Q&O [1]weighs in on the “myth” that Kerry is the most liberal Senator, saying, in part:
Kevin Drum does some myth-busting of his own. In response to a bit of “common knowledge”–i.e., Kerry is the “most liberal Senator”–that’s been propogated by critics of Kerry, Kevin pulls a Harvey and points out the rest of the story [2]….
Courtesy of one of Andrew Sullivan’s correspondents [3], here are the rankings for the past five years:
2003: Kerry – 1st (96.5) Edwards – 4th (94.5)
2002: Kerry – 9th (87.3) Edwards – 31st (63.0)
2001: Kerry – 11th (87.7) Edwards – 35th (68.2)
2000: Kerry – 20th (77) Edwards – 19th (80.8)
1999: Kerry – 16th (80.8) Edwards – 31st (72.2)
Average: Kerry – 12th (85.9) Edwards – 24th (75.7)The rankings for 2003 are skewed by the campaign season, and a longer look shows that Kerry is liberal, but hardly a Paul Wellstone liberal, and Edwards is smack in the middle of the Democratic pack.
I’d imagine that their….er, somewhat spartan attendance record doesn’t give them much opportunity to shore up their moderate credentials, either.
In any event, this seems to disprove the idea that Kerry is the “most liberal Senator”. For what it’s worth, I don’t really get the impression that Kerry is significantly more or less liberal than many other Democrats. ”
That was NOT the argument. THe statement by the RNC was to simply quote the ADA, as was seen in CNS’s news feed:
(CNSNews.com) – It’s official, the Republican National Committee said on Wednesday. The Kerry-Edwards ticket has made history, because it is more liberal than the 1984 Mondale-Ferraro team, based on ratings from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.
The ADA gave Democrat Walter Mondale a lifetime rating of 90 percent, the RNC noted, while John Kerry’s lifetime ADA rating is 92 percent.
Mondale’s running mate Geraldine Ferraro received a 79 percent lifetime ADA rating, while John Edwards’ lifetime ADA rating is 81 percent.
Americans for Democratic Action says it judges politicians’ liberal tendencies, based on 20 key votes on a wide range of social and economic issues, both domestic and international.
“Since ADA’s founding in 1947, the Annual Voting Records have served as the standard measure of political liberalism,” the group’s website says.
So, if I’m reading Kevin’s posting correctly, he’s suggesting that these stats were skewed by the ADA to make these people look better to their fellow liberals…. stats designed by liberals to make their fellow liberals look more liberal and therefore more attractive,and more electable, to their fellow liberals.
And it also appears Kevin himself is using some selective stats, just to make this point.So, is what’s going on that Kevin’s using selective stats to suggest that we can’t take liberals (the ADA) at their word because they use selective stats?
So is what Kevin’s really saying is that we can’t trust liberals OR their apologists because they use tainted data to make their points? Drum and those trying to dispell the notion that Kerry isn’t by far the most liberal thumbsucker that the DNC has ever puked up as presidental material are simply not credible, sorry.
And as an aside someone (over at Cox and Forkum I think) mentions; how can he be the most liberal senator based on his voting record when he hasn’t VOTED in about a year or so?
Some complexity gets into the picture however when we find out that the ADA site has at least two different sets of numbers for the same period…. which to MY mind increases the chances that ADA was, as Drum suggests, fudging numbers.
Jon seemingly defends Drum by suggesting a comparative look at the record of Dennis Kucinich, who Jon suggests is the most liberal in the Senate. Perhaps this is a valid point, however, the ADA didn’t seem to think so. Perhaps they weren’t taking Kucinich seriously. Or perhaps that for all of his leftist bluster, Kucinich actually voted farther to the right than did Kerry and Edwards.(If either of those are so, that raises some serious questions also, particularly in Ohio, but I’ll let those pass for the moment.)
Someone else pipes in anonymously, and by way of incredularity, swerves into the biggest truth, here:
Those of you who don’t have a problem with these rankings, do you truly believe John Kerry and John Edwards actually are the first and fourth most liberal senators or are you just spouting talking points?
To which I reply:
If we’re talking strictly about votes, yes, I do think so. If we’re talking about positions, what time is it?
As Thomas Sowell says today [4]:
“It is an insult to our intelligence to claim conservative values when both liberal and non-partisan organizations have rated John Kerry’s voting record as the most liberal in the Senate, more liberal even than Ted Kennedy’s.
What matters is not what Senator Kerry says during an election year about life beginning at conception. What mat ters is how he has voted on bills involving abortion — and how he has declared that he will block the appointment of any judges who are not pro-abortion.”
Kerry and Edwards are both on record as playing both sides of every issue in this election… and clearly, we cannot trust their words. At that point, all you have left to make judgements on as regards their ability to run the WH, is their actions… their records. And their records are even by liberal standards, abysmally liberal.
As such I place all this argument about who is the most liberal Senator in the same pile of dung as I put Kerry making the claim that he supports Conservative values…which he did over the weekend.