House Republicans tend to be authoritarian

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The average House Republican has a score of 37% economic, and 18% social, (28.5% libertarian) while the average House Democrat has a score of 15% economic, and 80% social (47.5% libertarian), a much more libertarian score. The top 90 authoritarians are all Republicans, and only a handful of Democrats are even in the top 150 or so. The Democrats tend to be a lot more libertarian, although there are a couple dozen libertarian leaning Republicans who are basically irrelevant.




Republicans are defined by social issues, only 3 are in the socially liberal half:
Paul TX 80%
Leach IA 60%
Flake AZ 53.33%

Democrats are defined by economic issues with only 3 in the economically conservative half:
Bean IL 80%
Cooper TN 67.5%
Matheson UT 60%


http://www.freedomdemocrats.org/

[jokerman]

The fact that a majority of the Republicans look like they're on the economically leftist side makes me think this research is a piece of junk.

[Jake]

I think the fact that I've seen that quadrant be called a whole bunch of names (populist, communitarian, etc.) pretty much removes any proof that House Republicans are authoritarian.

EDIT: And the methodology for the economic votes is braindead. Of course, choosing amendments to remove pork (which got between 40-80 votes, almost all Republicans) as half your votes will result in extremely low average scores.

[MODU]

I think the fact that I've seen that quadrant be called a whole bunch of names (populist, communitarian, etc.) pretty much removes any proof that House Republicans are authoritarian.

Much like:

[MaC]

Does seem like an accurate scale jfern.  The fact that probably at least 10% of Americans are on the libertarian quadrant says that we're way underrepresented in congress.

[Democratic Hawk]

Does seem like an accurate scale jfern.  The fact that probably at least 10% of Americans are on the libertarian quadrant says that we're way underrepresented in congress.

That might not be such a bad thing. Protecting y'all from your excesses

No seriously, I think most libertarians still live in the real world and not some Ivory Tower, which means they could be rather pragmatic if they were ever more of them in the House

Dave

[Jake]

If Ron Paul's in any way representative of what they'd act like, you'd certainly see some extremist rhetoric.

[Joe Republic]

One thing I noticed from that chart is that the only self-described socialist in the House is apparently more moderate than a whole bunch of Democrats.

[MaC]

If Ron Paul's in any way representative of what they'd act like, you'd certainly see some extremist rhetoric.

Paul's not extremist.  He states the reasons why people vote for him is because the farmers like their gun rights protected and the government kept off their backs.  He's against his party with his opinions on the war-not an extremist though.  He is a staunch defender of liberty-something more of our representatives should be for. 

But it would be better if more libetarians were elected as it would provide for balance against the standard 'big-government' types.  The quiz shows that the statist and liberal camps are too large by comparrison.

[Colin]

By my count this graph puts only 65 out of 435 members of the House as having an economic score higher than 50%, thus a centre-right to right wing voting pattern on economics. That's only about 15% of the entire Senate.

jfern or anyone else. Where does this originate from? Did someone take all the positions off of On The Issues and plot them on the graph or does this come from a certain website besides the blog that was posted?

If this is correct this is horrible and it confirms what I've come to think. That the Republican Party has moved from the conservatism of the 1990's to something more reminiscent of a European-style Christian Democratic platform as they have become more entrenched in power.

[nclib]

jfern or anyone else. Where does this originate from? Did someone take all the positions off of On The Issues and plot them on the graph or does this come from a certain website besides the blog that was posted?

It's not from ontheissues. They (freedomdemocrats.org) came up with their own set of votes.

[Jake]

jfern or anyone else. Where does this originate from? Did someone take all the positions off of On The Issues and plot them on the graph or does this come from a certain website besides the blog that was posted?

A libertarian Democrat website picked a bunch of votes from 2005 and 2006. Half (19/40) of the economic votes are on a slew of amendments Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced to cut pork. None of the amendments got more than 40-80 votes when they were brought up. That's why you're seeing severly skewed results here. The results show merely that most of Congress (and almost all Democrats) are interested in maintaining the pork culture in DC, not that Republicans are economically liberal (and by that 'authoritarian'.

[Colin]

jfern or anyone else. Where does this originate from? Did someone take all the positions off of On The Issues and plot them on the graph or does this come from a certain website besides the blog that was posted?

A libertarian Democrat website picked a bunch of votes from 2005 and 2006. Half (19/40) of the economic votes are on a slew of amendments Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced to cut pork. None of the amendments got more than 40-80 votes when they were brought up. That's why you're seeing severly skewed results here. The results show merely that most of Congress (and almost all Democrats) are interested in maintaining the pork culture in DC, not that Republicans are economically liberal (and by that 'authoritarian'.

Thanks Jake. I thought that there was something not right about this. It would be much more informative if someone plotted the positions of all House members using On The Issues voting data and graphs.

[Jake]

I'm working on cleaning up this data, but removing the pork votes. I'll see what I can post in the next few days.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Long live intellectual dishonesty!

[opebo]

Anyone can see that the Democratic Party is much closer to the 'libertarians' than the Religious Party.

[MODU]

Long live intellectual dishonesty!

Shhhh . . . don't encourage jfern. 

[jokerman]

Don't you dare call the Corporatist Party "Christian Democrats," Colin.  There's a huge difference between "big spending" (when in the Republican's case it means a huge corporate welfare system) and progressive economics.

[Colin]

Don't you dare call the Corporatist Party "Christian Democrats," Colin.  There's a huge difference between "big spending" (when in the Republican's case it means a huge corporate welfare system) and progressive economics.

I understand what you're getting at, though many Christian Democratic parties in Europe have moved into the same sort of realm as the Republicans. I do have to agree that the Republicans have basically included a mixture of corporatism and christian democracy into this new ideal of "big-government conservatism". Both of which are, IMHO, horrible ideologies.

[GOP = Terrorists]

Why would anyone remove pork and then claim that it is somehow balancing this debate?  Voting for pork = supporting a larger government, more spending, and more taxes.  I don't see how it isn't leftist in nature.

[Jake]

Why would anyone remove pork and then claim that it is somehow balancing this debate?  Voting for pork = supporting a larger government, more spending, and more taxes.  I don't see how it isn't leftist in nature.

It's not leftist or rightist. It's something incumbents do, as shown by the cross party nature the amendments were defeated.

[GOP = Terrorists]

It's not leftist or rightist. It's something incumbents do, as shown by the cross party nature the amendments were defeated.

So you're saying that increased government size, increased spending, and increased taxes are not leftist?