Posted on 07/06/2014 4:56:23 AM PDT by cotton1706
Kansans should be happy that Senator Pat Roberts is voting in a fiscally conservative way. Happy, but skeptical.
Organizations like Club for Growth produce scorecards of legislators. The motto of Club for Growth is “Prosperity and Opportunity through Economic Freedom.” It supports candidates who believe in pro-growth policies, limited government, low taxes, and economic freedom. Kansans who believe in these values can trust Club for Growth as a reliable indicator of candidates’ beliefs and actions.
The Club for Growth creates voting scorecards. These scorecards are a selection of votes that the organization believes distinguish between those who support the club’s pro-growth goals, and those who don’t. Scorecards like this are valuable because they show what officeholders have actually done, which may be different from what they say they have done, or what they promise to do.
Kansans should be happy that its senior senator Pat Roberts has been voting largely in alignment with these policies that promote growth and economic freedom. These votes are good for Kansas, and good for America.
But it hasn’t always been this way for Roberts, and we don’t know what the future holds. If reelected, Roberts could return to his usual voting habits.
The voting record of Pat Roberts and a group of peers, from Club for Growth. Click for larger version.The voting record of Pat Roberts and a group of peers, from Club for Growth. Click for larger version.There’s little doubt that Roberts is voting in a way divergent from his past. Even the New York Times noticed a shift in Roberts’ voting as an election approaches, recently reporting “And Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, eyeing his state’s sharp turn to the right, made sure to align his votes with the fiscally conservative Club for Growth 84 percent of the time last year.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wichitaliberty.org ...
That’s why I created the average, to account for all the variables, and to enable ordinary people to compare one senator with another using the same data, so it’s objective. For example, ACU tends to grade on tax and fiscal issues, so even McCain has a high rating with them. But we know McCain isn’t a conservative.
The only thing we have to judge the performance of these people is by their votes, but none of us have the time to look into every vote and take into consideration the why’s etc. So the rating agencies do that. But as you said, they have different agendas. So I averaged them out. And the averages speak for themselves. Roberts is super conservative in some years, piss-poor in others. The people of Kansas won’t know what they’ll get.
The best case scenario would be for Roberts to win his primary, but not overwhelmingly decisively so Moran will get scared and somebody will step up to run against him in 2016. I’d like to see every senator with a primary challenge, so that incumbents are always looking over their shoulder when they hit their vote buttons, and so that the people actually have a choice.
Cotton, Impy is the one who made the comment about the lack of coverage in the TN Senate race, not me, so I don’t know why you’re “replying” to me on that and putting it in quotes like I said it.
But in any case, I agree with Impy, so I’ll respond back anyway.
MOST of the outspoken advocates in the “Roberts/Enzi MUST go” crowd (Senate Conservatives Fund, Mark Levin, RedState, “Tea Party Express”, etc.) haven’t said a peep about RINO Lamar Alexander’s primary race. If their “goal” is really to challenge “all incumbents”, one wonders why they’ve decided the “most important” incumbents to purge are people who do the right thing 95% of the time, whereas ACTUAL RINOs who routinely vote with the Dems (like Lamar!) aren’t worth their time. Wake me up if Levin ever mentions Carr on his show.
Lamar Alexander is far worse than Pat Roberts, and Joe Carr is more credible and proven conservative than “Obama’s conservative cousin”, so they seem to have their priorities backwards.
Interestingly enough, the national liberal media establishment seems to be on their side — I’ve seen “Obama’s conservative cousin” mentioned half a dozen times in the national news over the last few months, but they’ve given ZERO stories about Joe Carr’s campaign. Hmmm.
If you’ve posted a story or two about the Alexander/Carr primary on FR, you seem to be the EXCEPTION to the rule. Maybe you can convince your fellow “Roberts must GO!!!!!!!!!!” incumbent haters to lift a finger in TN and start going after liberal Republicans instead of just conservative Republicans. Now THAT would be refreshing.
As for me, my thoughts are best summed up by post #9 in this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3175790/posts
Pat Roberts gets a 93% from Heritage - http://www.heritageactionscorecard.com/members/member/R000307
If the wasted dollars spent attacking Roberts had instead had going to McDaniels, he might have beaten Thad Cochran (57% from heritage).
Guys, you gotta be smart and pick your battles or we’ll lose them all.
9 posted on 7/3/2014, 8:42:20 PM by MrShoop
That’s my mistake. Sorry about that.
You’re absolutely right that Alexander is far worse than Roberts. In fact, he votes in lockstep with Thad Cochran on most things, which I’ve detailed on several other threads.
Alexander (TN) - 08/07/14 - 55% (Average) - 46% (Heritage) - 67% (CFG) - 60% (ACU) - 45% (FreedomWorks)
Cochran (MS) - 06/24/14 - 54% (Average) - 57% (Heritage) - 56% (CFG) - 60% (ACU) - 41% (FreedomWorks)
Maybe nobody has focused on his race because it’s been so far away, being the very last one. I don’t know. I’ve been doing a daily search on that race and there just haven’t been that many stories on it. The media have been ignoring it, probably to protect him. I’ve tried to fill in the gaps by reminding people about his votes for gun control, and amnesty, etc. Now’s the time to focus on that race but if there aren’t any stories, what do we do??
I’m also worried that that election is on a Thursday. Totally bizarre but maybe that’s normal in Tennessee.
Of course, I'm not surprised her primary race got zero press coverage given that RINOs run the Maine GOP and love being bipartisan with the RATs. Her primary opponent didn't even make it on the ballot and had to run as a write-in candidate (I would have written him in, solely as a protest vote). But Collins "won" unopposed on the ballot with only 48,000 votes or so, which proves it wouldn't take many votes to win a Senate nomination in Maine. The good news is an ACTUAL conservative won the ME-2 congressional primary (which was ignored by the national media, but it was my highlight of the evening), and Maine has a conservative Tea Party, which is in my opinion proves conservatives CAN be competative in Maine. I am sick of the argument from some conservatives that we should only go after RINOs in so-called "red states". We'll never end up with a conservative majority if we "wrote off" all the states that voted for Obama. You'll never know if you don't try.
If the argument is that we should challenge "EVERY" incumbent, no matter how conservative they are, because "three terms is enough", why wasn't the Levin crowd foaming at the mouth to "take out" Jeff Sessons? He also has a 90% consevative record like Enzi and Roberts, and is a solid Ted Cruz ally, but he's running for a fourth time, so according to their own logic, its "time for him to be shown the door" and he isn't enough of a "fighter" since he's not a celebrity outside of Alabama. Shouldn't the tea party recruit George Wallace's nephew to run against him? I don't think this selective outrage against incumbency helps your side.
Ditto with the Joe Carr race -- if Levin and the rest of the national conservative talking heads are going to ignore that race, maybe their fan club should call into the show and mention it. The problem is Levin fans think he's infallible, so if he says Roberts is public enemy no. #1 and shrugs his shoulders about Lamar, well gosh darn it, that must be because Roberts is 10X worse than Lamar.
You make a valid point about TN coming late in the primary election cycle and the bizarre timing of having a primary election on Thursday. I just hope the self appointed "conservative leaders" wake up before that election and stop ignoring it.
On Maine, there was a guy that was running against Collins but he was charged or convicted of beating his wife so she had clear sailing. This was definitely a missed opportunity because two years ago, somebody stepped up to the plate and said they were going to challenge Snowe and the next thing you know, she retired. I live in New England and I’ve never bought the “only moderates can win here” or “Scott Brown’s the best we’re ever going to get” arguments either. When Brown ran as a conservative, he won, hands down. When he ran as a moderate, he lost. And as you said, the conservative just got the nomination in the second district. It is possible. It takes people stepping up.
I would like every incumbent to be challenged in every election, and yes that includes conservatives like Sessions. And you’re right, his voting record is about even with Enzi’s. While I like Sessions, I still think three terms is more than enough, and if he were challenged by another good conservative, I would have advocated for new blood. But to answer your question, you can only support challengers where they appear, and neither Sessions nor Inhofe had challengers. I think there’s one or two others that I can’t think of but overall I think it is very healthy that we had so many challengers to incumbents this year. It definitely held them in check at least for this year and caused Harry Reid so much more frustration since he had to get help with cloture votes etc. from those that weren’t up for reelection such as Hoeven, Corker, Murkowski, Ayotte, etc. So the pressure is working.
I have no idea why Levin and company haven’t gotten behind Carr, or if they did, I haven’t heard of it. At least on FR we all know who he is due to all of our efforts.
I know this is long after the fact, but did want to add that Mark Levin has talked about Joe Carr, a number of times at least that I’ve heard. It may be that he got more information or contact from some of the other campaigns, so may have talked about them more, but I know he supported Carr.
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