[Stay the course]

TEN MOST LIBERAL REPUBLICANS (LIFETIME)

State	House/ Senate	Name	Dem/ Rep	2002	2001	Life	Years
Maryland	H	Constance Morella (GONE)	R	24	12	22	16
Rhode Island	S	Lincoln Chafee	R	53	44	34	3
New York	H	Sherwood Boehlert	R	64	32	39	20
Pennsylvania	S	Arlen Specter	R	50	56	42	22
Iowa	H	Jim Leach	R	56	25	44	26
New York	H	Benjamin Gilman (GONE)	R	67	36	46	30
Connecticut	H	Nancy Johnson	R	56	32	47	20
Connecticut	H	Christopher Shays	R	76	32	48	16
Maine	S	Olympia Snowe	R	65	60	52	24
New Jersey	H	Marge Roukema (GONE)	R	75	50	53	22

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TEN MOST CONSERVATIVE DEMS (LIFETIME)

State	House/ Senate	Name	Dem/ Rep	2002	2001	Life	Years
Virginia	H	Virgill Goode	D	96	96	92	6
Texas	H	Ralph Hall	D	88	96	83	22
Kentucky	H	Ken Lucas	D	84	76	74	4
Texas	H	Charles Stenholm	D	50	64	71	24
Mississippi	H	Gene Taylor	D	48	64	70	14
Mississippi	H	Ronnie Shows (GONE)	D	68	76	65	4
Georgia	S	Zell Miller	D	47	60	54	2
Michigan	H	James Barcia (GONE)	D	74	48	54	10
Nebraska	S	Ben Nelson	D	55	56	53	2
North Carolina	H	Mike Mcintyre	D	48	64	53	6

[ScholarWarrior]

Wow. Look at the ratings of Goode, Hall and Lucas.

We need to cause more democrats to be elected like that.

[Clemenza]

New York H Vito Fossella R 92 88 90 5

This is my guy. Not bad for an NYC congressman.

New York H Nydia Velazquez D 0 0 3 10 This is the district adjacent to mine. Scary what a difference a few blocks can make.

[AuH2ORepublican]

I think we need to take these rankings with a grain of salt. ACU picked X number of votes that it felt were indicative of whether a candidate performed as a conservative or a liberal, but the deviations from one year to the next prove that there is no consistency in the selection of votes. Those who are social conservatives and economic liberals tend to do better in 2001 than in 2002, but social liberals and economic conservatives tend to do better in 2002 than in 2001. Part of the reason is what you pointed out regarding the fact that 3 abortion votes were included for 2001 but only 1 for 2002, but I have to assume that it's only part of the problem. The huge drop-offs for pro-military, but economic liberal Dems Gene Taylor and Ike Skelton makes me believe that defense issues were more prominently used for 2001 than for 2002, which is quite ironic. If I were a Democrat and a conspiracy theorist (and I am neither), I would believe that the ACU changed its formula to make sure that Rockefeller Republicans did better than Scoop Jackson Democrats. I hope that's not the case.

I find it is better to look at a series of group ratings, not just one, in order to rate how conservative a Congressman truly is. However, from what I recall looking at the Christian Coalition rankings released just prior to the 2002 elections, their ranking system wasn't very good either (they cherry-picked only a handful of votes, and appeared to be giving a pass to RINOs and being extra hard on conservative Dems). So I propose that we come up with our own FREEP Ratings for Senators and Representatives, based on their actual votes, and which makes sure that a certain percentage of votes measure each of social, economic and foreign-policy conservatism. Such a system should also include votes for Speaker and Senate Majority Leader (I know there's no actual vote for Senate Majority Leader, which automatically goes to the leader of the party with a plurality of members, so for the Senate we should use the proxy of whether or not there's an R next to the Senators name), since having the Democrats in power ensures that a conservative agenda never even gets to the floor. What do you all think?