 |
|
Ron
Paul |
So, What Else Is New?
Another Liberty Index, and
another year that Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), a
former Chairman of the RLC, and a former
Libertarian Party candidate for President,
scores highest in House, with an 86. Following
close behind were Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Dana
Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Zach Wamp (R-TN), with
85s.
Index Compilation
The Liberty
Index consists of forty roll call votes in each
chamber of Congress, twenty addressing economic
liberty, and twenty addressing personal
liberties.
Among the votes
included in this year's index is the
confirmation of Gail Norton, a former state
chairman of the Colorado Libertarian Party, and
a former Colorado Attorney General, as Secretary
of the Interior. Other votes include tax cuts,
free trade, campaign finance regulation,
parental choice in education, medical savings
accounts, the war on drugs, and farm subsidies.
See the "Rollcall
List" or use the button at the left of
each year's Overview screen.
We are
interested both in the overall scores of members
of Congress, as well as the combinations of
their scores on the two components of the index.
In particular, we are interested in identifying
the members who, relative to their peers, vote
pro-liberty in both economic and personal
liberty issues. These we label them
"libertarian." We want the government
out of our pocketbooks and out of our bedrooms.
Those who vote
the opposite of a "libertarian," who
vote to increase taxes, spending, regulations,
and other intrusions into our private lives, we
unapologetically label
"authoritarians." What we have found,
in the decade we've been compiling the Liberty
Index, is that the
political axis has substantially shifted to
a liberty versus authority orientation.
Rating Transitions
Previously,
"social conservatives" battled
"liberals" to determine whether the
government would be used to force us to do one
thing or the other. What one party wanted to
prohibit, the other party wanted to jam down our
throats. The idea that the government should
just butt out, and let us live our lives as we
choose; enjoying the benefits of responsible
decisions, and suffering the consequences of
irresponsible decisions; was almost alien to the
body politic.
But, over the
years, liberals have morphed into an odd
agglomeration of social engineers, such as
eco-nazis and radical feminists. Increasingly,
true liberals have found themselves
uncomfortable in the left, and a few have joined
the right, as so-called "neo-cons."
(We just wish they'd get more fully with the
program.)
Social
conservatives have likewise found themselves
adrift. The pathetic third-party effort by Pat
Buchanan in the 2000 presidential election
demonstrated that unreconstructed social
conservatives have no coherence.
An amazing, but
generally unreported, transformation has been
happening among social conservatives. At first,
a pragmatic coalition with "economic
conservatives" was viewed as a necessary
evil. But, then, a realization took hold that
virtue does not need to be propped up by the
government. As long as government insures that
as people sow, so shall they reap, those who
make good decisions will flourish. Even more so,
others, who make mistakes, may come to see the
error of their ways. Accordingly, a new
consensus is emerging on the right: Liberty
Works … and Liberty is Right.
As a
consequence, not only do almost all members of
Congress fall somewhere along the
"liberty" versus "authority"
axis, but a clear difference in voting
tendencies between the major political parties
has emerged.
In 1968, George
Wallace said there wasn't a dime's worth of
difference between the Republicans and the
Democrats, and that was before inflation! But
today, there is a substantial difference in the
average score of Republicans and Democrats in
both houses, on economic liberties and a small,
yet significant, difference on personal
liberties.
Highest Senate
Scores
In the
Senate, there was a five-way tie for first, with
Wayne Allard (R-CO), George Allen (R-VA), Jon
Kyl (R-AZ), Don Nickles (R-OK), and Strom
Thurmond (R-SC) all posting 93s.
Lowest House
Scores
Low scorers in
the House were Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), with a 10,
followed by Peter Deutsch (D-FL), 12, Richard
Gephardt (D-MO) and Steve Israel (D-NY), with
13.
Low scorers in
the Senate were Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Paul
Sarbanes (D-MD), with 5s, followed by Jay
Rockefeller (D-WV) with an 8.
On the economics
component, we had nine, count them nine, perfect
100s in the Senate - Allard (R-CO), Allen
(R-VA), Enzi (R-WY), Gramm (R-TX), Hagel (R-NE),
Kyl (R-AZ), Lugar (R-IN), Nickles (R-OK), and
Thurmond (R-SC). And, in the House, we had two
more perfects 100s - Armey (R-TX) and Crane
(R-IL).
Also on the
economics component, we had a few perfectly
awful zeros. In the Senate, zeros were
registered by Boxer (D-CA), Durbin (D-IL), and
Sarbanes (D-MD). And, over in the House, we had
the following zero-meisters: Blagojevish (D-IL),
Clayton (D-NC), DeFazio (D-OR), Honda (D-CA),
Kucinich (D-OH), McGovern (D-MA), Udall (D-NM),
and Watt (D-NC).
On the personal
liberties component, we had no perfect 100s.
Bennett (R-UT), with 91, came closest in the
Senate. (He only voted wrong on anti-terrorism
and needle exchange.) Scarborough (R-FL), with
83, and Paul (R-FL), with 82, came closest in
the House. (Scarborough voted wrong on the Flag
Constitutional Amendment and cloning. Paul voted
wrong on educational vouchers and faith-based
initiatives [since he's more of a libertarian
purist than we are] and on domestic partners.)
Clifford
F. Thies e-mail
Past Chairman, Republican Liberty Caucus
Professor of Economics and Finance
at Shenandoah University
|
