Daily Kos || Cooking the scorecards

Daily Kos: Cooking the scorecards

Kos is talking about our district:

Anyway, word is that some organizations "cook the books" in order to reward their friends, or to seem less partisan. So, I decided to quickly test this out.

Iowa Rep. Jim Leach is always lauded as a pro-environment Republican. The League of Conservation Voters agrees, giving Leach a 90 percent rating in 2003. So I went over to Progressive Punch, searched by member, and got the following result:

Leach voted the progressive position on the environment 30.77% of the time.

Fact is, those scorecards cherry pick those issues that will provide the best results for the elected officials they like the most...

I posted my comments there but I'll repeat them:

Leach is really good at throwing liberals symbolic votes that mean nothing (300-110 final score). He gets more.... interesting when it's 218-216.
My personal theory is that people are taught these days that political parties are bad things, and it's rude to vote a straight ticket. So liberal-leaning voters are working along and realize they're voting for all Democrats. Leach is the only Republican who's not a Neanderthal, so he gets their token GOP vote. Then he goes back and organizes the house for Hastert and DeLay.

We came closest in 1996, when we were able to boil the argument down to a soundbite: "A vote for Leach is a vote for Gingrich." He went back in January 1997 and cast a meaningless vote against Newt for speaker. We lost our shorthand and in 98 the same Dem lost to Leach by a wider margin.

Leach also cleans up on the myth of bipartisanship. I has this argument with a Sierra Club canvasser on my block last week. (I refuse to support Sierra Club as long as they keep endorsing Leach.) These groups need to endorse some Republican, ANY Republican, to maintain their slim claim to bipartisanship, and now that Connie Morella is gone, Leach fits the bill. Then he goes back and organizes the house for Hastert and DeLay.

All of the above are reasons that bipartisanship is a crock. It might have meant something back when Bob Dole and George McGovern wrote the original food stamp bill, but in this era of Total War Politics it's a worthless relic.

Dave Franker has been a leader on our school board in making sure that two new schools being build in our district are environmentally friendly and energy efficient. He certainly deserves support from environmentalists, AND he will go to Washington and organize the House for Pelosi, and that's the important part.

P.S. Don't forget Leach's ties to the Bushes go all the way back to when he worked at the UN under H.W. in about `71...