Why The Idaho Conservative Scorecard Is A Service to Liberals

DFO posted a link to the Idaho Conservative Scorecard with a focus on the record of North Idaho legislators. Liberals protested furiously. DFO replied:

I’ve been spotlighting Adam’s Blog as well as a host of other Idaho blogs, conservative and liberal, for some time now. You can find their links in the right rail. Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t use commentary from conservative Idaho blogs because … you don’t agree with their material or posts. Why, ah, that would be censorship, wouldn’t it? Adam Graham’s post of a conservative scorecard in conservative Idaho is of widespread interest. BTW, I’ll also post links to an Idaho Liberal Scorecard, if someone wants to take the trouble to put one together.

This doesn’t satisfy liberals. Binky Boy chimes in with a complaint:

Arbitrary numbers assigned by people whose views you don’t know and can’t know mean very little in the grand scheme of things.

How many of these “conservatives” want to be in your bedroom or are comparing stances in restrooms?

Judge people by their contributions to society, not by the bold letter next to their name.

Perhaps, the Americans for Democratic Action should be told to abandon their scorecards and instead try and find out if Democratic members of Congress are embezzling money or have prostitutes on the premises. Ditto: The American Conservative Union. Binky Boy wants to make the point that rather than judging people on their record, we figure out how we imagine them to be and then make our judgments on that. The numbers assigned are not arbitrary. I didn’t say, “I really feel Nicole LeFavour should get a 0% and Sue Chew should get a 21%.” I dug through the State legislative voting records to find Conservative votes and found how members voted on those issues and produced a scorecard. The only thing one can argue is arbitrary is the choice of votes used for the scorecard. It seems like Binky Boy didn’t even find out how it was put together.

Big Mac writes:

Oh, and any organization that gives George Sayler a failing grade takes a nose dive off the respectability chart. He’s the lone grown up at that clown convention.

In a way, Big Mac illustrates the utility of the scorecard even for liberals. If I were a conservative member of the Legislature, I would expect to get failing grades on a liberal scorecard. Indeed, I feel more like supporting a candidate when I find a liberal group has been out attacking them.

I think Liberals can use the Conservative scorecard in the same way to find who they like and who they don’t. If you’re a liberal, you’ll like somebody with a 14% rating like Sayler or a 0% rating like Shirley Ringo or Nicole LeFavour. You’ll not be big fans of Marv Hagedorn, Rick Harwood, or maybe even Mary Lou Shepherd who have more conservative records. So, if you’re a liberal, read the scoreboard and think, “Lower is better.”

UPDATE:

Binky Boy complains, “. The “most liberal” or the “most conservative” is an independent designation that each person needs to determine for themselves.”

So apparently, conservatism and liberalism are “zen things.” I can just “know” people are conservatives or liberals because I think they are, never mind how they vote. The scorecard approach is imperfect, but given that groups on both the left and right use them and they do shed light on a candidate’s voting record, I’d much rather rely on that then, “Boy, this guy feels conservative.”