Posted by
philosophocon on Saturday, September 06, 2008 3:41:00 PM
You can search a number of different ways with THOMAS, and I thought it would be fun to take a stab at McCain’s legislative record from another angle, this time just some numbers. Again, I’m going to focus on those bills important enough to merit having his name on them, either as a sponsor or co-sponsor, in the 110th Congress.
What I’m doing this time is to see who he worked with the most, conservatives or liberals. To that end I have consulted the American Conservative Union’s list of Senate Standouts for 2007 to choose a sample of Senators. (http://www.conservative.org/archive2/Senate_standout.asp) From the five with a 100% rating, we have John Barrasso, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, James Inhofe and Jon Kyl. From the 21 with a 0% rating, I have chosen 10: Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dick Durbin, Daniel Inouye, Teddy Kennedy, Frank Lautenberg, Patrick Leahy, Robert Menendez, Harry Reid, and Chuckie Schumer.
So the number next to each Senator’s name represents the number of times their name appeared with McCain’s on a Senate bill during the 110th Congress.
Barrasso: 29
Coburn: 69
DeMint: 64
Inhofe: 61
Kyl: 87 (the other AZ Senator, not a terrible surprise they worked together a lot)
Biden: 65
Dodd: 64
Durbin: 70
Inouye: 40
Kennedy: 56
Lautenberg: 45
Leahy: 44
Menendez: 53
Reid: 36
Schumer: 61
So McCain spent more a lot more time working with ten Dems with a 0% ACU rating than one of the Repubs with a perfect score, John Barrasso. He spent more time with a zero, Turban Durbin, than with a hero, save for his fellow Arizonan Kyl, as much time with Schumer as Inhofe and as much time with Dodd as DeMint. Who can credibly tell me that the Democratic Congressional agenda, such as it is, would move along faster under Obama than McCain? I would suggest it would be the opposite. I have a feeling that Obama would be such an inept boob that things’ll slow down because he can’t manage process or procedure; while McCain has ably demonstrated that he can keep things humming right along. And, once again, what do the above numbers suggest about the type of legislation we’d get from President McCain, and where he’d look for support on his issues?
Update: Even though not a perfect zero (7% ACU rating, pretty crappy but still nowhere near the most liberal Senator, at most the 22nd most liberal Senator), I really should have posted the number for Obama, which is:
Obama: 72
That's right, McCain's name appeared beside Obama's more than often than with any of the other Senators listed above save Kyl. And you've seen what the important ones were about in my previous posts.
And for added fun, I thought I'd just check up on the Hildebeast and McCain:
Clinton: 73
Wow, even better! So during 2007 and 2008, when these guys are all campaigning for their party's nomination, they all decided to go in the same direction. Sounds like they all must have had the same advice as to what the best direction would be for them during their campaigns. Greats minds think alike!
Also, just to provide some comparative numbers, I took a couple of the 100% rated conservatives and searched how often their names appeared with Obama and Clinton.
DeMint-Obama: 27
DeMint-Clinton: 32
Kyl-Obama: 31
Kyl-Clinton: 36
And in every comparison for DeMint and Kyl, between 20 and 25 of the bills they were on with Obama and Clinton were simple Senate Resolutions, you know, useless declarations welcoming a dignitary, honoring a Senator, mourning the passing of a Senator or ex-Senator, celebrating the birthday of a Senator or ex-Senator, tut-tutting regimes like Iran or Burma. And obviously for Kyl, even though he worked on a lot of bills with McCain, most of those weren't the same ones McCain was working on with the Dems.
2nd Update: BrianR just noted on his blog that McCain's said that he and John F'n Kerry are 'buds', and so I thought that it'd be worth it to see how often they hung out:
Kerry: 61