MyDD :: Peeling Republicans?

Peeling Republicans?

by Bob Schacht, Fri Jan 11, 2008 at 12:13:32 PM EST

Normally what happens with a lame duck president is that his interests, and those of his party, begin to diverge during his last session of Congress, because he's not running for office again, and they are. Democratic strategy for the current session of congress counted on this phenomenon, and the leadership has expressed frustration that it has not been happening to the degree that they expected. Well, I will present data to show that it is happening, although whether the shift has been less than normal I am not in a position to assess.

An index on what is happening is conveniently provided by Progressive Punch (PP)I will focus on their ratings of Senators, where the current fable is that in order to get anything done, one needs 60 votes. PP not only provides a progressive ranking of each member for the current congress [PROGRESSIVE '07-'08 SCORES(%), but also their PROGRESSIVE LIFETIME SCORES(%). Consequently, the difference between these two scores provides an index of a "progressive shift." In Congress as a whole, the shift has been about 4%-- perhaps not as much as many might have expected as the result of the Democrats gaining control of the Senate. It may reflect the slimness of the Democratic control.

However, the Progressive Shift of 11 Republicans may be remarkable. These 11 shifted more than 14%. The shift was perhaps most remarkable with three of the 11, Senators Snowe, Specter, and Collins, whose shift has pushed their PP rating over 50%. These may be the Republican senators who constitute the most likely swing votes.

    Representative    Party    State    Progressive Shift
1    Smith, Gordon H.    R    OR    25.68
2    Snowe, Olympia J.    R    ME    22.91
3    Lugar, Richard G.    R    IN    18.97
4    Collins, Susan M.    R    ME    17.56
5    Voinovich, George V.    R    OH    16.51
6    Coleman, Norm    R    MN    16.09
7    Hagel, Chuck    R    NE    15.24
8    Specter, Arlen    R    PA    15.13
9    Domenici, Pete V.    R    NM    15.04
10    Murkowski, Lisa    R    AK    14.98
11    Stevens, Ted    R    AK    14.27

This analysis also revealed an entirely unexpected result: South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson, who spent much of the year recovering from a stroke, turned from a mildly progressive rating of 78% to a Republican-like rating of 28.81! Who's been registering Sen. Johnson's votes? Or is this a database error?

Bob in HI

Tags: Senate, Democratic strategy, progressive shift (all tags)

Permalink :: 4 Comments :: Post a Comment

Re: Peeling Republicans? (none / 0)

The link you supplied does not work. I think you meant to link to the mainpage of progressivepunch, right?

http://progressivepunch.yvod.com/

Wile we are at the rankings site progressivepunch, I would like to note that Barack Obama's progressive score of 81.82 ranking him only as the 43rd ranked progressive for the 07/08 session (out of 49 Democrats in the Senate) is only 8 spots removed from Olympia Snowe's, and that the more telling "When the Chips are down" score of 77.11, which was good for a 44th ranking out of 49 Democrats on the progressive richter scale, had him only 7 slots ahead of Snowe.

http://progressivepunch.yvod.com/members .jsp?search=selectScore&chamber=Sena te&scoreSort=current_close

So, while some of our own have seemingly become LESS progressive (Obama's current turn-away from progressive values stands in contrast to his lifetime score, which shows a more progressive posture by Obama in earlier years) some of the Republicans appear to understand that the country has shifted more to the left, and have adjusted their antennas accordingly.

by georgep on Fri Jan 11, 2008 at 12:51:15 PM EST

Re: Peeling Republicans? (none / 0)

Thanks, georgep, for help with the link. Yes, actually among the current candidates, the most progressive, according to PP's ratings, is Hilary Clinton:

Senator Clinton 91.29    16/100
Senator Obama     88.76    24/100
Rep. Kucinich     87.42    121/432
Senator Dodd     86.57    28/100
Senator Biden     84.26    31/100

Ha! I bet you didn't know that Clinton and Obama are both more progressive than Kooch! But what really bothers me in Clinton's record are her votes in two areas tracked by PP:

War & Peace
(17 subcategories) 80.30 39/100(T)
Human Rights & Civil Liberties
(9 subcategories) 82.22 30/ 99(T)

These are Clinton's "least progressive" issues, and I give these issues more weight. These are two areas in which I fear Clinton may not roll back Bush, Cheney & Co.'s excesses as firmly as Edwards would.

Bob in HI

by Bob Schacht on Fri Jan 11, 2008 at 01:10:29 PM EST

Re: Peeling Republicans? (none / 0)

Did you mean to say that the 4% progressive shift in the Senate was due to the slimyness of the Democratic control?

Thank you for the analysis, but I'm always skeptical of Republicans who suddenly become "straight-talking mavericks". The problem with these people, as Al Franken says, is that they are never the 51st vote (or the 60th vote in today's Senate). So what does their supposed independence matter? When the Republican coalition falls apart, these people get the green light to vote Progressive because it helps their re-election bids. But when it's close, they will always, always side with the John Birchers out there.

by the mollusk on Fri Jan 11, 2008 at 01:55:13 PM EST

Stand by your man (none / 0)

Yeah, mollusk, we might call this the "election-year shift", except it was last year. So, its fair game for progressives to target these chameleons with Democratic challengers.

But part of the point, to me, is that perhaps these 11 are among the least likely to "stand by their man" when it comes to an impeachment vote.

Bob in HI

by Bob Schacht on Fri Jan 11, 2008 at 02:25:56 PM EST

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