How many of you are familiar with the political scorecards that split ideologies into economic and social areas? These types of scorecards sometimes vary in their specific details but they generally create four political viewpoints along with a fuzzy center. There's liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, and an authoritarianism or sometimes populism. Many of us have taken several tests designed to tell us where we would be placed on such a political grid. Have you ever wondered where our representatives in Washington may end up?
At the blog
Freedom Democrats I have been diligently nose-counting a set of thirty votes from the first session of the 109th Congress in the House. I have plans on doing a Senate scorecard as well, although you can see the results from my
previous Senate scorecard.
The goal of Freedom Democrats is to try to welcome libertarians into the Democratic Party and also to encourage the Democratic Party to adopt both libertarian rhetoric and policy some policy areas, such as ending the War on Drugs and ending corporate welfare. Part of this agenda deals with educating libertarians by revealing to them the disconnect between the small government rhetoric of the Republican Party and the actual big government agenda they vote on in office. Part of this program was a recent scorecard based on the Liberty Caucus founded by former Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas. We revealed that despite the claims of the members of the Liberty Caucus to be in favor of small government and to be allies of Ron Paul, their voting record came far short of their promises.
This House scorecard was based on a total of thirty votes. Fifteen votes dealt with social issues and defense and fifteen other votes focused on economic issues and trade policy. I have an in depth blog post on each of these two aspects of the scorecard, along with graphs illustrating how the two parties compare and the entire scorecard for all members of Congress. You can check out both the social and defense scorecard and the economic and trade scorecard for more information.
As a quick summary, the social and defense scorecard included votes on the Patriot Act, the intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, Iraq, the War on Drugs, and other such votes. The economic and trade scorecard was special because of the decision of myself to not include votes on tax cuts, as one of the main arguments we are using in winning over libertarians is that tax cuts at a time of record deficits will simply contribute to both the debt and the deficit. In the long term this will NOT 'starve the beast' but instead will cause future generations to bear the burden of higher taxes to pay for not just the tax cuts but the interest on the debt. Sustained smaller government is only possible by controlling spending and the economic and trade scorecard is focused very much on opposition to big spending programs like agricultural subsidies and energy subsidies. It also includes votes dealing with the Kelo decision.
The results have been presented in two graphs. First, the Republican Party.
And now, the Democratic Party.
The two parties seem to be divided between a far-right authoritarian party (Republicans) and a center-left liberalism party (Democrats). But it just amazing to see the strong party discipline in the Republicans compared to the Democrats, who have members spread out far more.
What do you think?