there once was a democrat named joe
whose loyalty to party was no mo
but who stood beside him?
our current front runner
who's closer to joe than you know
there is a whole group of americans, both republicans and democrats, who believe that all power should be concentrated in the white house. george bush and dick cheney is obviously one of those americans. so is joe lieberman. and hillary clinton.
hillary is trying to distance herself from the blank check that she has given this administration, time after time. want to invade iraq? no problem! take away constitutional rights? no problem! commit torture (although we'll call it something else)? NO PROBLEM!
it's the president's prerogative, and we shouldn't do anything to curtail presidential powers. of course, that's hillary's solution, perhaps because she wants to preserve for herself this vast freedom of action without some pesky oversight by the constitution or legislature or whoever.
and then there is barack obama. a professor of constitutional law at one of the premier institutions in the country, barack has been a steady supporter of the checks and balances enshrined in our constitution.
we can see the difference between barack and hillary when we look at their senate voting record. the national journal provides a broad overview of how our senators voted and has separated them into liberal and conservative scores. hillary claims that she doesn't want to be considered a liberal and this shows in her votes.
Senate Liberal ScoresIn the following list, 99 senators^ are assigned liberal scores for their roll-call votes on key economic, social and foreign policy issues during 2006. The scores on each scale are given as percentiles. The composite score measures votes across all three issue areas.
You can sort the ratings from highest to lowest liberal score across all categories or alphabetically by name.
How To Read These Ratings
A score of 78 on economic issues, for example, means that the senator was more liberal than 78 percent of his or her Senate colleagues on key economic votes during 2006. "N/A" means the member missed more than half of the rated votes.
Composite Liberal score
Rank Name Economi Social Foreign Lib Composite
01. Durbin, Richard 87 95 95 95.2
02. Boxer, Barbara 87 92 98 95
03. Kennedy, Edward 87 88 98 93.7
04. Leahy, Patrick 83 96 94 92.5
05. Harkin, Tom 83 96 92 92
06. Reed, Jack 87 89 88 91.3
07. Sarbanes, Paul 87 93 79 89.7
08. Murray, Patty 87 96 76 89.3
09. Mikulski, Barb 87 80 88 88.8
10. Obama, Barack 87 77 85 86
11. Wyden, Ron 87 80 79 86
12. Kerry, John 87 89 72 85.7
13. Bingaman, Jeff 87 76 85 85.5
14. Levin, Carl 75 96 79 85.3
15. Feingold, Russ 75 86 88 84.5
16. Lautenberg, Fra 87 89 67 84.3
17. Dodd, Chris 83 93 72 84
18. Akaka, Daniel 74 79 95 83.5
19. Menendez, Rober 79 80 84 82.7
20. Jeffords, James 82 86 77 82.5
21. Dayton, Mark 78 77 85 81
22. Cantwell, Maria 79 80 75 79.7
23. Reid, Harry 79 72 79 78.2
24. Biden, Joseph 87 73 65 77.5
25. Feinstein, Dian 67 70 88 76.5
26. Schumer, Charle 71 80 67 74.5
27. Dorgan, Byron 67 57 95 74.3
28. Bayh, Evan 83 71 62 73.3
29. Inouye, Daniel 65 75 74 71.8
30. Kohl, Herb 75 67 67 71
31. Byrd, Robert 66 51 92 70.5
32. Clinton, Hillar 63 80 62 70.2
33. Johnson, Tim 63 61 79 69.2
34. Stabenow, Debbi 67 68 66 68
35. Salazar, Ken 72 69 61 67.8
36. Lieberman, Joe 73 74 54 67.5
37. Carper, Thomas 67 63 67 67.2
-- Rockefeller, Ja 62 N/A 60 N/A
38. Baucus, Max 60 66 71 66.2
39. Conrad, Kent 59 58 77 65.3
40. Lincoln, Blanch 58 64 62 62.3
41. Nelson, Bill 57 64 58 60.3
42. Pryor, Mark 61 59 57 59.5
43. Chafee, Lincoln 55 61 59 59
44. Landrieu, Mary 56 60 55 57.5
[...]
hillary clinton is much closer to joe lieberman than she is to barack obama. and this difference is most dramatic when we are talking about foreign policy votes. here obama rates a 85% liberal score while hillary rates a 62% -- a dramatic 23 point difference. if you ever called joe a bush lite candidate, then you'd have to agree that hillary fits the bill as well. there just isn't that much difference betweem lieberman and hillary here.
the thing about hillary -- and bill clinton has a lot to do with this -- is that she votes like a bush lite, but she talks tough about taking it to the administration and contrasting herself with it. the record simply doesn't support her faux image here. hillary is a reliable supporter of executive power and executive privilege -- and you can be sure she would fight as hard as bush does to retain both.
in the end, hillary represents continuity with the past. it is clearly mainstream -- let's have no allusions that barack's program of change isn't a split with the past. hillary, of course, thinks this makes him naive.
i think brave is a better word. necessary works, as well...
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