How longstanding is ‘longstanding’?
If it’s within the last 8 years, then it would be easy to rack up an amazingly positive rating by making completely meaningless votes.
After the last few years, I’ve come to believe in conservative ratings a whole lot less than before.
I really don’t have particularly strong feelings regarding passage of Ryancare or lack thereof. I hated the bill on the surface, but I also hated how people reacted to it. No improvements, no alternatives, no true negotiations, just constant no, no, no.
It should have been possible to scupper or at least correct this bill without having turned the CFC into impossible-to-please or completely-bought-off.
Now instead of having a voice in future bills, they’ll be ignored.
When a caucus has 36 or so members, they become hard to ignore. A political party tries to control its elected members with perks and campaign cash. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t need or want the normal perks or the money.
Most of the members have self-imposed term limits. They are in Washington for a few years, then gone.
Each ideological rating organization selects which pieces of legislation they feel most reflects a conservative (or liberal) position. For example, one of the 24 bills that the American Conservative Union tracked in 2015 was Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration; another was closing Guantanemo; a third was repeal of the death tax.
Looking at how every one of 435 members voted on 24 bills gives a range of scores from 0 for a knee jerk liberal like Nancy Pelosi to 100 for a perfect conservative like Mark Meadows the Chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
There is quite a range within both major parties. In the Senate, for example, the most liberal Republican is Susan Collins of Maine who votes the conservative position only 46% of the time over 18 years in Congress. Before leaving the Senate to become U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions voted conservative 94% of the time over 18 years.
On the Democrat side, Barbara Boxer voted conservative 4% of the time over 24 years while Florida’s Bill Nelson has voted conservative 28% of the time over 25 years.