The American Conservative Union rated the vast majority of Democrats in the Senate and most in the House as members of the “radical left” Friday.
ACU’s yearly ratings score the “conservativeness” of each representative or senator and found that an overwhelming majority of Democrats didn’t support a single conservative agenda item on their list. The group rated Forty Democratic Senators and 78 Democratic Representatives as members of the “radical left” due to the fact that they voted with the conservative agenda less than 10 percent of the time.
There were only 44 Democrats in the Senate, and 188 in the House of Representatives during the 114th session of Congress.
The ACU used different scales for each governing body. Senate members were ranked on member’s rejection of confirming President Barack Obama’s appointment to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, as well as votes against energy spending. The group also favored a positive vote on a bill that would require an audit of the Federal Reserve, a rejection of the “Waters of the United States” rule that would have expanded the legal definition of the term “navigable waterway,” essentially fighting the expansion of the Environmental Protection Agency. The ACU included 25 votes in its ratings.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the House Freedom Caucus was the most conservative of the Congressional Caucuses. Members of the freedom caucus voted with the conservative agenda 92.29 percent of the time. The Progressive caucus was the least conservative, earning a paltry 1.57 percent on the scale.
Sen. Susan Collins was the lowest-rated Republican Senator. The ACU found that Collins voted with the conservative agenda only 23 percent of the time. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin earned a higher rating, supporting the agenda 27 percent of the time.
“For years Republicans assumed that Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was more conservative than her voting record shows. That clearly was a polite and inaccurate analysis,” ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“She barely gets 1 out of 4 votes right. She’s the least reliable Senate Republican by more than 20 points and she scores closer to her liberal colleague Sen. Angus King than she does to the 2nd most egregious Republican.”
“She even votes worse than Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin. We find ourselves uncertain if Manchin deserves some credit or if Sen. Collins simply has moved so far Left she is beginning to make Democrats look good,” Schlapp concluded.
Collins made news by only supporting President Donald Trump’s agenda 85 percent of the time, the lowest of any Republican in 2017. She opposed the confirmation of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Secretary of the EPA Scott Pruitt in February.
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