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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-07-31

The Colorado Four ARE Impressive: 95.8% 

Captain Ed put up a great post last night based on some research from the WaPo.

Both parties like to blame the other for failing to exercise independence in Congress. Their supporters blame the members of the opposite side for excessive partisanship which keeps Washington DC from accomplishing anything for the people. The Washington Post decided to take a look at the 110th Congress to see which party exercises the most partisanship -- and the Democrats win the prize.

In fact, the Democrats take nine of the top ten partisan spots, as well as scoring 8 points higher in partisanship as a party. The lone Republican ties for first, though:

100% - Charlie Norwood (R-GA)
100% - Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 9
9.7% - Nita Lowey (D-NY)
99.4% - Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-CA)
99.1% - Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
98.9% - Xavier Bacerra (D-CA)
98.7% - Diana DeGette (D-CO)
98.6% - Gary Ackerman (D-NY)
98.6% - Hilda Solis (D-CA)
98.6% - Ellen Tauscher (D-CA)
98.6% - Al Wynn (D-MD)

Of course, Norwood is dead, and has been since February (h/t: The Anchoress). After Norwood, the next Republican comes in at 94.8%. JoAnn Davis (R-VA) has only cast 134 votes, however, as she has missed significant time while fighting a recurrence of breast cancer. She comes in at #174 on the list of partisans -- which means that Democrats occupy all of the previous 173 slots, of those among the living, anyway.

So, it would seem, excessive partisanship is excessively a Democrat phenomenon.

But, to the contents of the title of this post . . .

How do Colorado's four Democrats rate? 95.8%. NINETY-FIVE FRICKIN' PERCENT!!! On 19 of every twenty votes, the Colorado Democratic delegation can be counted on to toe the line.

Way to represent the people of Colorado there, guys and gals.

The individual ratings are as follows:

Degette: 98.7%, good enough to rank 7th in the whole House;
Ed Perlmutter: 95.4% ( I wonder if the 7th Con District agrees with the Dems 95.7% of the time?
Mark Udall: 95.1% so much for that attempt at painting himself as a "moderate"--GET THIS NUMBER OUT THERE, Bob Schaffer!!
John Salazar: 94.8%

Feel well-represented? Feel like your representatives are putting YOUR good above their own or their party's?

Me neither.

So, you probably ask, how do the Republicans fare? Well:

Musgrave: 90.4%
Tancredo: 88.9%
Lamborn: 87.8%

Not exactly rebellious, those Republicans; but a bit more even-handed than their Democrat counterparts.

Want to know why so little gets done in Washington? It's a problem that goes both ways . . .

but one way is a little more pronounced than the other.
Posted by: Michael / 7/31/2007 03:15:00 PM

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