Last week I noted a ranking of U.S. Senators based on the aggregate of their voting scores according to seven liberal interest groups. The above chart uses the rankings of eight conservative groups to produce comparative results. As you can see, both Clinton and Obama are virtually indistinguishable on policy matters, but both rank, respectively, 78th and 70th most conservative senators, or the 22nd and 30th most liberal (compared to 38th and 42nd on the liberal scale). The only significant aberration is Obama's 22-point difference with Clinton on the Club for Growth ranking.
John McCain is only the 39th most conservative on the list, or 61st most liberal (5th most conservative, 96th most liberal in last week's metric). Perhaps it's no coincidence that two of the top three most conservative senators, Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, were also on the "Is the GOP Still Lost?" panel at CPAC. Clearly, the presumptive GOP nominee looks way more conservative to liberals than he does to conservatives.
--Mori Dinauer
