Obama: Only 92% Socialist
October 30, 2008
by Peter G.
Klein
According to
this analysis reported by my Missouri colleague Thom Lambert. Is it
just me, or does that figure seem low?
Obama "Voted With the Socialist" 92% of
the Time
Posted by Thom Lambert on October 30,
2008
The Mizzou campus is all atwitter today over a
scheduled appearance this evening by the world’s biggest celebrity
my old constitutional law prof, Barack Obama. As I write this, I’m
watching the Obama folks prepare for the rally, which is to take place on
the quad my office overlooks. I must say, it’s a pretty impressive
operation.
Without doubt, Sen. Obama whom I admire and of whom I am quite fond (on
a personal level) has run an amazing campaign. He’s raised gobs of
money, and he’s managed to deflect most of Sen. McCain’s attacks while
getting his own attacks to “stick.” One of his most effective strategies
has been to tie Sen. McCain to President Bush by, among other things,
highlighting the extent to which McCain
“voted with the
President.”
Yesterday, my friend and colleague,
Royce Barondes, undertook a similar analysis. He researched how
frequently Sen. Obama voted with the nation’s one
socialist senator, Vermont’s
Bernie Sanders. Royce emailed me the results of his research this
morning: “In Senate Roll Call votes in the first session of this
Congress, where the two voted, Obama voted with Sanders 92% of the
time.”
This breaks down as follows:
- The two senators both participated in the same vote 273 times. (There
were 442 total votes during the period, but there were 169 occasions on
which one senator voted and the other didn’t; 166 of those times, Sen.
Obama was the non-vote.)
- Of the 273 votes in which both senators voted…
- * They both voted yea 157 times.
- * They both voted nay 93 times.
- * They voted differently (one yea and one nay) 23 times.
- The two senators thus voted in concert on 250 of 273 occasions.
That’s a 91.58% agreement rate.
Josh has previously poked some holes in this sort of “voting with”
analysis, but putting those aside, Royce’s findings raise an obvious
question: If the fact that Sen. McCain voted “with the President” 90% of
the time means a McCain administration would be “more of the same,” does
the fact that Sen. Obama voted with Congress’s sole socialist 92% of the
time mean that an Obama administration would be socialist?
I suppose we needn’t evaluate that syllogism to answer the underlying
question. We could simply consider, among other things, Sen.
Obama’s:
- * support for the (badly misnamed) employee free choice act,
- * avowed desire to “spread the wealth around,”
- * opposition to the Central American, Colombian, and South Korean
free trade agreements,
- * promise to renegotiate NAFTA,
- * letter to President Bush asking him not to cut farm subsidies as
part of the Doha Round,
- * promise to preserve the 54 cent per gallon import tariff on
Brazilian ethanol,
- * vow to increase the minimum wage and index it to
inflation,
- * support for windfall profits taxes on successful
businesses,
- * plan to expand welfare by giving income tax “refunds” to people who
don’t pay income taxes,
- etc., etc., etc.
http://truthonthemarket.com/2008/10/30/obama-voted-with-the-socialist-92-of-the-time/
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