POLITICAL SCIENCE TEA LEAVES….Who’s really the most liberal senator? Over at OTB, Chris Lawrence has more on this subject, including yet another measure that goes by the shorthand nickname CJR:
The results suggest that Obama has the 9th most liberal voting record in the Senate, with rival Hillary Clinton in 11th place and very little daylight between them.
….On the Republican side, John McCain appears in the middle of the GOP pack, as the 20th most-conservative senator, with no credible chance of being the “most conservative” (a rating that South Carolina’s Jim DeMint runs away with). McCain is, however, more conservative than GOP stalwarts like Orrin Hatch, Thad Cochran, Sam Brownback, and Lamar Alexander.
So there you have it. If you average this with the Lewis/Poole OC results, it seems likely that Obama is about the 10th most liberal senator and Clinton is probably around 15th or so. McCain is Clinton’s mirror image, with an average ranking that places him around the 15th most conservative senator.
