Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex
Actually a voting record is a fairly decent way to determine a congressman's ideology, and is used by all sorts of organizations both Left and Right for that purpose. It's imperfect, but better than any other measuring stick out there. Your "color blue" example is absurdly reductionist.
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No, Glenn. While it may be helpful to determine ideology, that doesn't mean it is helpful to determine whether or not someone is a socialist, anymore than it helps to determine whether or not people in Congress are anarchists. The legislation brought forward in Congress and subjected to a full vote of the Congress stays by and large within certain ideological boundaries (which, to save your brain the pain of trying to figure it out, do not extend to socialism or anarchy). This is because a full vote of Congress only occurs after the bill has been vetted by a committee and recommended for a full vote and then given a place on the docket by the presiding officer. You don't get socialist bills in the Congress, any more than you get a bill promoting anarchy (you would know this, if you knew the definition of socialism, but I digress). Even if a particular bill had an element of socialism embedded in it (and a small handful have), that bill would be such an exception to the rule that determining whether or not all members in Congress were socialists by their aggregate voting pattern is silly. You may as well be measuring attitudes towards the color blue.