Posted on 02/23/2017 9:55:00 AM PST by GonzoII
You are blinded by tweets. Even sadder.
You are blinded by hate for Trump. I suggest that you read “The Big Agenda”.
I hate people who feel the need to soil Reagan while building up Trump.
Why read a book when the best president ever is in office?
Deeds, not words.
I think Reagan is one of the greatest presidents of all time but you are so knee-jerk in your worship of him that you see everything as an attack against him. It is certainly not putting down Reagan to say Trump is off to a faster start.
By the way, Trump’s speech at CPAC yesterday was great. Last president to address them since Reagan.
You speak of deeds, how about a $12b reduction in national debt in Trump’s first month vs a $200b increase during first month of Obama? How about increasing optimism with our economy as thousands of jobs are already being created and stock markets continue to reach new highs?
And this is only the beginning. Reagan was great in his time but we need to stop living in the past and focus on the unparalleled opportunities before us today with perhaps 8 years of Trump and 8 years of Pence, who is far more likely to carry the Trump legacy than Bush was for Reagan.
When Reagan took over in January 1981, it was not useful to be looking back to the good old days of Eisenhower. It was time to seize the day and undo the damage of Carter. Just as our focus today should be undoing the damage of Obama, Clinton, and unfortunately the Bushes who proved to be such disappointments.
What planet are you on? He had next to nothing to do with that. He hasn’t passed one piece of legislation. That’s mostly due to receipts into the Treasury.
I want Trump to succeed. You want to give him credit for the sun rising.
Enjoy.
Fact is, the markets are rising to new heights and the Dow Jones Average has reached 11 new "highs" since Trump got elected. This is a function of the fact that businesses and investors are feeling much more confident with a Trump presidency.
Contrast that to all those who predicted a market crash if Trump got elected. Turns out they were very, very wrong.
A $12b reduction in the national debt compared to an increase of $200b in the debt in Obama's first month is definitely an indicator that things are moving in the right direction.
Instead, embrace Trump and let's Make America Great Again (like Reagan did all those years ago). By the way, did you know that Reagan used that exact same slogan? Great minds think alike.
One more time for the thick of head - the debt reduction is due to the taxes being extraordinarily high. If you are proud of that then.........
Please, go find a MAGA thread.
Once again, you should not take every pro-Trump thread as a rebuke on Reagan. We do not have to diminish Trump in order to prop Reagan up. Reagan already proved his greatness! Now it is time for Trump to undo the damage done by Obama, Clinton and the Bushes and move conservatism forward once again.
Also, we haven’t even seen the Trump tax cuts yet. Just imagine how much more the debt will go down then! Stop living in the past and embrace the historic opportunity that we have with President Trump, control of the Congress and the most conservative Cabinet in history!
I don’t know when they came out but the ACU had the 2016 ratings now, in years past I used to eagerly await them, this year I plum forgot. Can’t be taken as the only source but still worth knowing
Easy View
PDF with vote descriptions, I haven’t read them so I don’t even know if I agree with all them
IL ratings
Our departed Senator Kirk 32 (up from 29 in 2015) yuck, he goes into the books with a lifetime rating of 52.47, Duckworth is 0 (lifetime 5, which is actually higher than most state rats)
Mike Bost 52 (up from just 33) not happy to see that
Rodney Davis 56 (just 51 lifetime)
The departed Bobby Dold 12, up from 13, lifetime 26.25, wow I didn’t know it was that low. That much worse than even Kirk.
RAT Lipinksi is at 17 (down from 25 lifetime 19.12) so for 2 years running he did better than Dold, embarrassing
Hutlgren 88 (lifetime 82)
Kinzinger 43 (down from 44, lifetime 57)
LaHood jr., sit down Billyboy, 84 (it says lifetime 85, but this was his first year, whatever)
Roskam 67 (up from 65, lifetime 82.77)
Shimkus 64 (up from 58) well below his lifetime of 80, this might be ACU being more stringent in general or else he’s moved left, this seat is so Republican
My rat Luis G, 5!!! It’s usually zero
So there you have it, Hultgren is our Prince, LaThug jr. hopefully won’t be bad, Davis and Kinz should be primaried and Shim should retire.
Junior LaThug may be waiting to get ensconced before moving hard left. I saw those IL %’s and they were awful across the board. If you’re a Republican sitting in a Dem-leaning seat, I can understand being more to the moderate side, but you should be no more than a 50%er.
What is the point of being 40/30/20/10 when you’re clearly voting a majority Democrat agenda ? Dold being almost 90% leftist ? Why didn’t he just switch parties ? I don’t even know how with a record that bad he could even carry a GOP primary. That’s moonbat even by Democrat standards.
Conversely, if you’re a Republican sitting in a 55% Trump seat or higher, you have no business being below 85% Conservative, if not more. Other than for Hultgren, the entire remaining lot should be defeated. Kinzinger ought to be voting like Don Manzullo, just no excuse.
Of course, if a Dem occupies a GOP district, good luck in getting them to vote in the opposite direction as a leftist Republican would in a Dem seat. These guys vote virtually little different than Bob Dold. Case in point, look at 3 GOP districts in Minnesota with Democrat members: Collin Peterson, now down to 21% Conservative; Rick Nolan, a 96% leftist rating. And then you have Tim Walz, a perfect moonbat 100%. He ain’t even trying to moderate his vote in anticipation of running for Governor. Wow. That puts him in such august company as the loons Betty McCollum and Keef X. Can you imagine a Republican in a Democrat district voting 100% Conservative ? What a joke.
At least mine in TN are a bit better. 4 of the 7 Republicans got 96%’s (Black, Blackburn, DesJarlais & Roe). The worst got an 80% (Fleischmann from Chattanooga’s 3rd), which would push him out of the Conservative range (85% and above is Conservative according to the ACU).
My erratic Congressman, Jim Cooper, got a 21% in 2015 only to drop down to an 8% in ‘16. His lifetime is higher, but that is mostly from the time he spent representing the rural 4th. He’s got one thing going for him: He’s equally hated by the left and right in Nashville. A moonbat could probably successfully primary him. I have a suspicion that our present Marxist moonbat Mayor, Megan Barry, might try to do that before long (her 2nd term would conclude in the Summer of 2023). Such a replacement would bring her in line with the execrable Stalinist & anti-Christian bigot from Memphis, Steve Cohen.
I’m wondering if it would be worth the trouble to do a Austin-style carving of Nashville, placing us in 3 or 4 surrounding suburban districts. Might be too risky. I deplored that the Republicans played nice with the overrepresented Nashville Dem legislators during redistricting for 2012. They should’ve been merciless in carving up the seats and drawing fingers into the suburbs (a reverse-Chicago). We still have only 1 House seat out of 10 in the county, belonging to the divisive and unpopular RINO Speaker (and 1 Senate seat, a “moderate” who represents the outer ring district, one of 3 seats overall: A Republican one, a moonbat White hipster district and a Voting Rights Act (Black) one, the latter of which I’m stuck in).
Mark Twain once said that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. ACU has been erratic with its ratiings for years, so I don’t judge a member of Congress by his ACU score alone.
What I prefer is to take six vote ratings that are available generally (and are among those that Michael Barone includes in his Almanac of American Politics. Three of the ratings are from conservative groups (ACU, Family Research Council and Club for Growth) and three are from liberal groups (ADA, AFSCME and League of Conservation Voters. I convert ratings from liberal groups to conservative ratings by subtracting the negative score from 100, so, for example, a 15 from the ADA becomes an 85 conservative rating. I then add up the six conservative scores and divide by 600 to get a total conservative percentage. Sure, the formula is still garbage in, garbage out, but it is unlikely that all six vote-scorers will be unfair to a particular candidate.
I don’t think that Barone has released his 2018 Almanac yet, and I’m traveling and don’t have time to look up all of those ratings, but if you or another FReeper can do so we’ll get a better picture of just how conservative or liberal those voting records truly are. I don’t doubt that TB Republicans will have far higher conservative ratings than IL Republicans, but I seriously doubt that even RINO Dold is below 40% conservative overall.
Kinzinger, Roskam, and Hultgren should also retire. All of them were elected at least four times. That should be long enough for anyone to be in Congress.
I hope that Roskam will run for the U.S. Senate in 2020 and that Hultgren will run for the U.S. Senate in 2022. Kinzinger should never win an election again, unless he becomes more conservative.
Since I lived in Dold’s district, I know how he won his primaries. During his first primary (in 2010), he said that he was conservative, and, as soon as he got to Congress, he became liberal. He didn’t have any primary opponents in 2012, ‘14, and ‘16.
The new Almanac of American Politics is due out August 7, so it’s fast approaching.
Excellent point, Phil. I remember Dold's first primary in 2010 and he marketed himself as much more conservative than Mark Kirk. We thought we were getting a 60-70% conservative candidate and we ended up with a 20-30% one. I distinctly remember Dold saying he disagreed with Kirk on the Cap n' Trade vote and that he was not a tree hugger candidate, and that he really hadn't thought about abortion much but considered himself "middle of the road" on the issue and not a Planned Parenthood yes-man.
I didn't trust Dold because he seemed too similar to Kirk for my tastes, but he seemed like an earnest guy so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and figured a 70% conservative Republican in that district would definitely be an improvement over what we had before.
Of course, once he got to Washington, he immediately tossed that aside that "moderate" stuff (while still claiming to be "moderate" on paper), and began to eagerly vote with the far-left on ALL their pet social causes and enviro-wacko agenda. Dold was so far left he was one of only three Republicans to vote AGAINST repealing Obama (again, while claiming on paper that he "supported" repealing Obamacare) and even voted in favor of gender-selection abortion, a vote that many card-carrying Democrats in the House weren't even comfortable casting.
Not surprisingly, as Impy noted, his latest ACU scores before his butt was kicked out of office showed that Dold was to the LEFT overall of "moderate Democrat" Dan Lipinski. He is certainly well to his left on social issues, but Dold voted so liberal he couldn't even muster a 20% "conservative" score from the ACU.
Quite frankly, Dold was the last straw for me. Apparently Kirk played the same game back in 2000 (told everyone he was a "moderate" overall and a "fiscal conservative" on economic issues, so many conservative publications thought he was an "upgrade" from liberal Republican John Porter), and Porter himself played the game during his first run for Congress.
"Moderate on social issues" is 10th District RINO speak for "I will loyally do Planned Parenthood's bidding 100% of the time and vote identical to Nancy Pelosi on social policy"
Since these candidates can't even be honest and have the balls to ADMIT they are indistinguishable from far-left Democrats on social issues, I don't see why any Republican should cast their vote for these backstabbers. Being a social liberal is one thing. Outright lying about it to get GOP voters to support you is quite another.
"Republican" Bob Dold scoring under 20% overall and being rated to the LEFT of centrist Democrat Dan Lipinski doesn't surprise me. Illinois had a similar situation in the late 70s when liberal "Republican" Chuck Percy had an ACU rating in the 20s but centrist RAT Alan Dixon had an ACU rating in the 40s. Of course, they were elected statewide. Too bad Dold and Lipinksi's districts are on opposite sides of Crook County, it would be poetic justice if he had lost his seat by being gerrymandered in with Lipinski. He'd have to claim Lipinski's right-of-center views on social issues are "too extreme" for Illinois but voting with Planned Parenthood 100% of the time is "moderate". Good luck selling that to the southwest suburbs.
Anyway, the lifetime rating stuff does indeed show its better to look at a composite score from 4 or 5 different conservative organizations than just the ACU alone, since they've been wildly inconsistent over the decades.
I remember a few months ago, there was some new "Liberty" rating and a lot of FReepers were crowing about how good a conservative watchdog organization that was. I said it sounded like some Paulbot group and they balked at that, saying it was a mainstream conservative organization. But in any case, they gave wackjobs like Justin Amash and Walter Jones some "100%" score, so apparently they have a very different idea of "conservative" than I do. Frequently voting with HAMAS and Nancy Pelosi doesn't equal "100% conservative" to me, no matter how much you scream "TEA PARTY!!!" as you do it.
I agree. I think LaThug Jr. will spend at least a decade in office before he turns traitor, so he becomes an entrenched incumbent and starves off a future primary challenge by pointing to what a "reliable conservative" he's been and how he's gone to bat countless times for the GOP over the years and blah blah blah. That's the game daddy played and I expect Jr. will do the same.
Fieldmarshaldj is correct that the LaThug Jr. having the second highest ACU score in the state doesn't so much reflect on him being a staunch conservative as it does on the state's GOP delegation overall being NOT very conservative. I honestly expected better from guys like Roskam and Shimkus, especially since their seats have been redrawn to be "safe". Most of our delegation is a bunch of spineless low-key backbenchers. Ironic that Phil Crane was seen as a "do nothing" Congressman in his heyday because Crane was a LOT more outspoken on conservative causes than any of these guys. Even Henry Hyde (an "80% ACU rating" type guy who was NEVER fiery or an uncompromising hardliner) looks like He-Man next to the current crop of conservatives we have.
Bost's ACU rating (currently 52%, up from just 33) is pathetic as well but doesn't surprise me. I know a lot of FReepers thought this guy was a good conservative in the state legislature but I remember being back in college in '03 and have had a visceral dislike of Bost ever since then. Some of my classmates went to Springfield to talk to the state legislatures about college student issues and they reported that all the legislators, across the idealogical spectrum (far left to hardcore conservative) were very welcoming and took the time to meet with them and answer their questions and concerns, except Bost. Apparently Bost acted like a douche and said university students don't vote anyway so he's not going to waste his time talking to them. (granted, most of my fellow students were marxist Nader supporters, but that doesn't excuse Bost's behavior, especially since they weren't there to protest or disrupt anything but instead have a serious discussion about issues we were facing on campus)
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