Diary: How to Rate Liberal, Conservative Politicians

It seems that every political publication or organization at one time or other tries to rate politicians, usually from the other side, as to how liberal or conservative politicians are.

In one of the latest such efforts during the 2008 presidential campaign the conservative National Journal rated Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barak Obama as the "most-liberal" senator in Congress just as it rated John Kerry the "most-liberal" senator during the 2004 presidential campaign. How Obama passed Kerry as "most liberal" or Kerry abandoned his "liberalism" was left unstated. It is a safe bet that the "most-liberal" label will be attached by the National Journal to any Democratic candidate for the presidency in any and all future elections. The National Journal will then try to convince everyone that "liberal" is a bad thing.

The 2009 rankings when there was no election but based on 2008 voting patterns in Congress: "Most liberal senator: Washington's Patty Murray. Rhode Island's Jack Reed was second and California's Barbara Boxer third.

Most conservative senator: A four-way tie between Arizona's Jon Kyl, Wyoming's Michael Enzi, Nevada's John Ensign and Wyoming's John Barrasso

These ratings will always be subjective. If a politican votes in Congress on a bill or measure that a conservative organization dislikes the vote will be labled liberal and if the vote is in agreement with the rating organization, the rating will be conservative. This pattern will true hold if political leanings of the rating group were liberal. If a politician votes against a bill liberals like the conservative organization may rate the vote as conservative even though the vote was against the bill because the politician favored a more-liberal measure. But logic and nuance aren't recognized by the conservative mind.

But there is a better way to rate "liberal" on any vote and that is to compare it to two of the most-ardent liberal sources in existence; the United States Constitution and the teaching of Jesus Christ. Agreeing with the Constitution and Christ is liberal; disagreeing with one or both is conservative.

As the George W. Bush disasterous administration limped to its long-anticipated end, many conservatives ~ including Bush himself ~ proclaimed that history will improve the Bush image and he will come to be seen as a successful president. For others, it didn't matter because we will all be dead, a position Bush staked out to justify his ignoring of, or failure to reverse, his disastrous mistakes. That is all nonsense, but what could happen is that if President Obama can manage to set right all that Bush made wrong, Bush will come to be seen as less the screwup he actually is. On that the nation will ultimately suffer because it could open the possibility of a Bush-like dunce in the future becoming president and redoing all that Bush did.

Many of those conservatives who proclaimed Obama the "most liberal" during the last election and tried to convince us that liberal is bad ~ regardless of its relationship to the Constitution and the teachings of Christ ~ left the Bush cheering squad they had been on for years to claim that Bush wasn't a "true conservative" because of his many actions. One has to wonder why these same people who discovered in 2008 that Bush wasn't a real conservative worked so hard to get him into office in 2000 and 2004 on the basis that he was a champion conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan. Conseravtives in Congress gave him everything he wanted on the basis that he was acting to enhance the legacy of Reagan and those in the media praised him for his conservative principles up unil he became an embarrassment to the Republican Party. If they cannot recognize who is conservative like them, how can they detect in others the "liberalism" that they don't understand? They can't.