National Journal Rating Tool

It is important that when you call your Congressman or Senator a 'liberal' or a 'conservative' or a 'moderate' that you be accurate. National Journal has put together a pretty neat interactive tool that rates lawmakers, on a conservative-to-liberal scale, based upon their Congressional voting record throughout 2009. Lawmakers are assigned scores for each of their roll-call votes on leading economic, social and foreign-policy issues.

As a side note, Coffee Milk Conservative drew my attention to the fact that the magazine also determined that “long-standing ideological divides have persisted – and even deepened – in President Obama’s Washington”- in other words, the election of Obama made American more partisan, more divided, and more bitter than even under George Bush!

It is a neat tool, but keep in mind, it does not rate the importance of various votes- foe example, my Congressman, Democrat Gary Peters, had a composite liberal score of 57.3, placing him very close to Congressman Bart Stupak on the spectrum, which seems to imply that Peters and Stupak are moderates. But on the 10 most important issues facing our nation today, including healthcare, stimulus, cap and tax, etc, Peters and Stupak voted party-line liberal 90-100% of the time (see my post Gary Peters Scores a 90% On the Pelsoi Index- A Vote by Vote Analysis of Peters Liberal Record in Congress). I guess one way to look at it is that if you look at all the meaningless votes, Peters is simply a liberal, but on the important issues of the day, Peters is a super-liberal.