Where do Democratic and Republican Party Legislatures Rate in the Liberal vs Conservative Scale?

[Vambram]

Institute for Legislative Analysis

scorecard.limitedgov.org

https://scorecard.limitedgov.org/guides/US-Guide-2023.pdf

Democrats, Not Republicans, Are Capitol Hill’s True Extremists

Next time Democrat comrades foam at their mouths about “extreme, mega-MAGA Republicans,” they should study ILA’s irrefutable statistics

www.dailysignal.com

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is a relative conservative in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. And self-styled socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is hardly the hardest-Left House member.

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Legislative Analysis made these and other discoveries after reviewing 58 Senate votes and 133 House tallies in 2023. It then rated lawmakers from zero (most liberal) to 100 (most conservative). ILA figures confirm that Capitol Hill Democrats are almost uniformly left-wing radicals while Republicans are more moderate than even GOP voters imagine.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Institute for Legislative Analysis

scorecard.limitedgov.org

https://scorecard.limitedgov.org/guides/US-Guide-2023.pdf

Democrats, Not Republicans, Are Capitol Hill’s True Extremists

Next time Democrat comrades foam at their mouths about “extreme, mega-MAGA Republicans,” they should study ILA’s irrefutable statistics

www.dailysignal.com

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is a relative conservative in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. And self-styled socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is hardly the hardest-Left House member.

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Legislative Analysis made these and other discoveries after reviewing 58 Senate votes and 133 House tallies in 2023. It then rated lawmakers from zero (most liberal) to 100 (most conservative). ILA figures confirm that Capitol Hill Democrats are almost uniformly left-wing radicals while Republicans are more moderate than even GOP voters imagine.

This is a pretty dumb and badly-written paper:

https://scorecard.limitedgov.org/guides/US-Guide-2023.pdf

Strike 1: The whole pdf is a bunch of images - you can't highlight or search any of the text. You can't follow any of the citation links. It's terrible.

Strike 2: The Process and Methodology section. They describe how they filtered out the irrelevant votes, which is good, but they didn't talk at all about how they measured or judged anything else. Most of the paper shows charts allegedly sorting politicians by their "limited government" or "conservative" voting principles, but nowhere does this paper even attempt to articulate how they determined these "limited government ratings."

Strike 3: Even if we try to imagine what this paper is trying to measure by taking the words at face value, it seems to be evaluating these folks on a criteria that just isn't very important to Democrats. "Limited government" may be near-religious dogma on the right, but it's essentially irrelevant on the left. It should be no surprise that Dems don't take it into account when voting. That doesn't mean that they're "left-wing radicals." I bet if you analyzed support for DEI initiatives, you'd find a similar thing in the other direction - some Dems care a lot about it, but Republicans just don't, so Reps are going to all show up on one end of the chart.

 

[Vambram]

I had ZERO problems searching through that web page pdf.

However, perhaps the following link: Institute for Legislative Analysis

might be useful to y'all.

 

[iluvatar5150]

I had ZERO problems searching through that web page pdf.

What did you use to open it? I tried Chrome, Edge, and the Acrobat Reader desktop app, and had the same results in all of them.

However, perhaps the following link: Institute for Legislative Analysis

might be useful to y'all.

That's the page where I found the pdf. The numbers are all meaningless without an explanation of what they're supposedly measuring.

 

[Gene2memE]

This is their definition of progressive and conservative: All lawmakers are graded on a 100-point scale with a “0” representing an expansive government role (progressive) and a “100” representing a limited government role (conservative).

That's so simplistic as to be moronic. Looking at the language they use in their scorecard, its clear that this is just a partisan political point scoring exercise, not any type of serious analysis.

For instance, here's some of the lowlights for the scorecard for Rep. Jasmine Crockett

"Placing a Critical Check on the Regulatory Power of Unaccountable Bureaucrats within the Executive Branch through the "REINS" Act."
"Harming American Energy Production by Reinforcing a Moratorium on Oil and Gas Drilling in the South Atlantic."
"Protecting Taxpayers by Blocking $650 Billion in Student Loan Forgiveness Authorized by the Biden Administration."
"Protecting Taxpayers through a 50% Cut in the Bloated Bureaucracy of the Bureau of Land Management."
"Reducing Government Interference within the Energy and Aviation Industries by Striking Funding for the "CLEEN" Program which Provides Subsidies for Environmental Technology."
"Protecting Taxpayers from Being Forced to Pay for Transgender Sex Reassignment Surgeries through the DoD TRICARE Health Program."
"Cutting Wasteful Spending by Striking $186.3 Million in Funds for the National Endowment for the Arts."
"Eliminating an Unnecessary International Foreign Aid Program and Redirecting the $1.74 Billion in Savings to Deficit Reduction."
"Authorizing a Defense Bill without the Removal of Countless Radical Left Policies Surrounding Abortion, Transgenderism, Critical Race Theory and Civil Liberty Violations."

Rep. Jasmine Crockett via the Institute for Legislative Analysis

scorecard.limitedgov.org

It's just a list of right-wing/MAGA/alt-conservative talking points, dressed up as an analysis. Anyone supporting bureaucrats, environmentalism, transgender individuals, the arts, abortion rights, foreign aid or legislation on business is given negative scores.

This is just an in-group/out-group demonisation exercise.

 

[Vambram]

What did you use to open it? I tried Chrome, Edge, and the Acrobat Reader desktop app, and had the same results in all of them.

Adobe Acrobat desktop app worked for me.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I had ZERO problems searching through that web page pdf.

However, perhaps the following link: Institute for Legislative Analysis

might be useful to y'all.

Server side error.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Adobe Acrobat desktop app worked for me.

Full Acrobat or Acrobat Reader?

 

[Pommer]

Institute for Legislative Analysis

scorecard.limitedgov.org

https://scorecard.limitedgov.org/guides/US-Guide-2023.pdf

Democrats, Not Republicans, Are Capitol Hill’s True Extremists

Next time Democrat comrades foam at their mouths about “extreme, mega-MAGA Republicans,” they should study ILA’s irrefutable statistics

www.dailysignal.com

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is a relative conservative in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. And self-styled socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is hardly the hardest-Left House member.

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Legislative Analysis made these and other discoveries after reviewing 58 Senate votes and 133 House tallies in 2023. It then rated lawmakers from zero (most liberal) to 100 (most conservative). ILA figures confirm that Capitol Hill Democrats are almost uniformly left-wing radicals while Republicans are more moderate than even GOP voters imagine.

Number 4 in the Senate on the Conservative side is one, Tommy Tuberville, who, as memory serves, single-handedly snafued the Pentagon’s hierarchy (for something like 15 months), by placing a “hold” on the promotions of thousands of people in the armed services, which is hardly what a “small-government” conservative (which seems to be the only metric involved in this “ranking”), would likely do.

 

[KCfromNC]

Strike 3: Even if we try to imagine what this paper is trying to measure by taking the words at face value, it seems to be evaluating these folks on a criteria that just isn't very important to Democrats. "Limited government" may be near-religious dogma on the right, but it's essentially irrelevant on the left.

Given this, I'd be curious if situations of legislating right wing dogma onto medical decisions would be considered liberal or conservative by the methodology.

 

[KCfromNC]

Number 4 in the Senate on the Conservative side is one, Tommy Tuberville, who, as memory serves, single-handedly snafued the Pentagon’s hierarchy (for something like 15 months), by placing a “hold” on the promotions of thousands of people in the armed services, which is hardly what a “small-government” conservative (which seems to be the only metric involved in this “ranking”), would likely do.

Freezing the pay of government employees might be considered conservative since it "protects taxpayers"?

Who knows, in this sort of thing the reasons are made up after the conclusion so it is hard to predict what the excuse might be.

 

[Zaha Torte]

Institute for Legislative Analysis

scorecard.limitedgov.org

https://scorecard.limitedgov.org/guides/US-Guide-2023.pdf

Democrats, Not Republicans, Are Capitol Hill’s True Extremists

Next time Democrat comrades foam at their mouths about “extreme, mega-MAGA Republicans,” they should study ILA’s irrefutable statistics

www.dailysignal.com

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is a relative conservative in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. And self-styled socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is hardly the hardest-Left House member.

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Legislative Analysis made these and other discoveries after reviewing 58 Senate votes and 133 House tallies in 2023. It then rated lawmakers from zero (most liberal) to 100 (most conservative). ILA figures confirm that Capitol Hill Democrats are almost uniformly left-wing radicals while Republicans are more moderate than even GOP voters imagine.

I would say that none of them are conservative enough.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Number 4 in the Senate on the Conservative side is one, Tommy Tuberville, who, as memory serves, single-handedly snafued the Pentagon’s hierarchy (for something like 15 months), by placing a “hold” on the promotions of thousands of people in the armed services, which is hardly what a “small-government” conservative (which seems to be the only metric involved in this “ranking”), would likely do.

It's now clear that this "analysis" is not some reasoned academic or scholarly ranking, but rather one of the many "scorings" of legislators provided to supporters to help them pick candidates. It is no different than similar rankings from groups from NARAL to the NRA and every group in between.