Well thats an argument relevant to both McCain and Obama.

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy...the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. ~John Kenneth Galbraith

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party. ~Winston Churchill

The Christian Right is neither

But of course.

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises

These rankings are not trustworthy.

Full text here: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com...ves/14428.html

Another source also points to how meaningless the National Journal's rating system is:
Full text here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2008/0...al_sena_1.html

"Better yet, National Journal’s press release on the rankings noted the criteria was based on 99 key roll-call votes last year: “Obama voted the liberal position on 65 of the 66 votes in which he participated, while Clinton voted the liberal position on 77 of 82 votes.” So, Clinton voted for the liberal position 77 times, Obama voted for it 65 times, which makes Obama the chamber’s single most liberal member. Got it."

That one says that the most liberal one is whoever has the most number of votes for liberal policies rather than the percentage that a person voted for liberal policies. That is ridiculously easy to topple, all one has to do is say:

Clinton is the more conservative one because she had five conservative votes, and Obama had only one. Because Clinton is the more conservative one, then Obama has to be the more liberal one because liberal and conservative are opposites.

Honestly, whoever wrote that must not have passed math in high school.


This one argues that Obama is not the more liberal one because he was only more liberal than Clinton by 10 votes.

"And there really wasn't much room between them. The Journal notes of the 267 measures on which both senators cast votes in 2007, the two differed on only 10."



Here's the report on how the original results were obtained:

A panel of National Journal editors and reporters initially compiled a list of 216 key congressional roll-call votes for 2007 -- 107 votes for the Senate and 109 for the House -- and classified them as relating to economic, social, or foreign policy.

Polidata, a nonpartisan political data-analysis firm, downloaded lists from the House and Senate websites of how all the members voted on the key votes. Those lists were then sent to the Brookings Institution, where the Information Technology Services division performed the data processing and statistical analysis. The ratings system was first devised in 1981 under the direction of William Schneider, a political analyst and commentator, and a contributing editor to National Journal.

The votes in each issue area were subjected to a principal-components analysis, a statistical procedure designed to determine the degree to which each vote resembled other votes in the same category (the same members tending to vote together). Ten of the 216 votes (eight in the Senate and two in the House) were dropped from the analysis because they were statistically unrelated to others in the same issue area. These typically were votes that reflected regional and special-interest concerns, rather than general ideology.

The analysis also revealed which yea votes correlated with which nay votes within each issue area (members voting yea on certain issues tended to vote nay on others). The yea and nay positions on each roll call were then identified as conservative or liberal.

Each roll-call vote was assigned a weight from 1 (lowest) to 3 (highest), based on the degree to which it correlated with other votes in the same issue area. A higher weight means that a vote was more strongly correlated with other votes and was therefore a better test of economic, social, or foreign-policy ideology. The votes in each issue area were combined in an index (liberal or conservative votes as a percentage of total votes cast, with each vote weighted 1, 2, or 3).

Absences and abstentions were not counted; instead, the percentage base was adjusted to compensate for missed roll calls. A member who missed more than half of the votes in any issue category was scored as "missing" in that category (shown as an asterisk[*] in the vote-rating tables).

Members were then ranked from the most liberal to the most conservative in each issue area. These rankings were used to assign liberal and conservative percentile ratings to all members of Congress.

The liberal percentile score means that the member voted more liberal than that percentage of his or her colleagues in that issue area in 2007. The conservative figure means that the member voted more conservative than that percentage of his or her colleagues.

For example, a House member in the 30th percentile of liberals and the 60th percentile of conservatives on economic issues voted more liberal than 30 percent of the House and more conservative than 60 percent of the House on those issues, and was tied with the remaining 10 percent. The scores do not mean that the member voted liberal 30 percent of the time and voted conservative 60 percent of the time.

Percentile scores can range from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 100. Some members, however, voted either consistently liberal or consistently conservative on every roll call. As a result, there are ties at both the liberal and the conservative ends of each scale. For that reason, the maximum percentiles are usually less than 100.

Members also receive a composite liberal score and a composite conservative score, each of which is an average of their six issue-based scores. Members who missed more than half of the votes in any of the three issue categories do not receive a composite score.

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises

Of those 5 votes where Clinton went "conservative" what did she actually vote on? I bet you it was nothing of consequence. And you didn't really do anything but restate what I said about them differing in only 10 out of 267 votes.

Do you have a problem with me looking over your statistics?


Establish a Senate Office of Public Integrity to handle ethics complaints against senators. January 18. (27-71) C-1

Clinton votes NO

Allow certain immigrants to stay in the United States while renewing their visas. June 6. (41-57) C-2

Clinton votes NO

Waive a procedural objection to providing legal immunity to people who report suspicious activities. July 19. (57-39; 60 votes required to waive the Budget Act) L-3

Clinton votes YES

Express the sense of Congress that funds for U.S. troops in the field should not be cut off. March 15. (82-16; 60 votes required because of a unanimous consent agreement) C-1

Clinton votes YES. Obama votes YES

Express the sense of the Senate that the Iranian revolutionary guard should be designated a terrorist organization. September 26. (76-22; 60 votes required because of a unanimous consent agreement) C-1

Clinton votes YES

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises

So Clinton doesn't want ethics reform, something Obama has been a proponent of. This makes him liberal?


I had a friend who had to return to her country for a semester because she was renewing her visa. That was 6 months of her time wasted. I have to disagree with her vote here and I don't think it makes sense to kick people out if they're trying to stay here legally. Call it a liberal view if you wish.

This is of no consequence.

Legislation was a first step towards war.