Analytics show Democrats twice as radical, GOP more moderate

To hear Democrats talk about Republicans, it’s pretty easy to get the impression that they are all right-wing rabble-rousers made more conservative after the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), for example, this week ranted about having to work with unbending “terrorists” across the aisle.

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“You are negotiating with terrorists,” screeched DeLauro, her hair streaked a trendy blue, at all her Republican counterparts. “Members on your side, I will continue to call out the harm you are doing in this process, both in what these bills propose to do and in your approach on how we treat one another,” she added, angered that the GOP wanted to temper freebies to liberal LGBT outfits.

But it’s not the Republicans who have radicalized over the past 50 years, but the Democrats, and by a huge margin, according to a deep dive into the latest CPAC ratings.

In one of the biggest surprises revealed since the ratings began, there are twice as many Democrats with perfect zero conservative ratings in the House and Senate today than in 1971. And there are significantly fewer Republicans with 100% ratings in the House and Senate today than 51 years ago.

The just-published 52nd Ratings of Congress from CPAC’s Center for Legislative Accountability found 14 House members and just three senators — Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Mike Braun (R-IN) — with 100% ratings on the issues the group cares about. In 1971, there were 61 perfect House Republicans and 11 100% senators, including conservative giants Barry Goldwater of Arizona, New York’s James L. Buckley, and South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond.

The CPAC report found Democrats much more moderate decades ago. In 1971, there were 23 senators with zero ratings on the CPAC report card of conservative issues. Today there are 38, more than half the Democratic Caucus. In the House, there were 39 perfect liberal voters in 1971 compared to 76 today. Plus, there are dozens of House liberals with a 3% rating.

CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp said the analytics show that many Republicans come to Washington and face-plant into the swamp’s deep end over time.

“I think the biggest lesson that we've learned, through our analytics, is that over time Republicans that returned to D.C. term after term tend to move towards the middle. And over time, Democrats move towards the hard Left,” Schlapp said in an interview.

“That's the impact of this town and that's the impact of most of the media in this town. That's the impact of the cocktail circuit. The more you move to the left, the more you will be loved,” he said.

In the new report, Schlapp pulled no punches, revealing the disappointment conservatives have in their team.

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“I wish I could say that Congress helped tackle the problems our country faced that I described in 2021 on these pages. However, sad to say, they instead have poured oil on the fires of inflation, massive deficits, increasing crime numbers, and illegal migration by voting for the Biden left wing agenda,” he wrote.

“In some cases they were aided by RINO/establishment Republicans, many of them Old Bulls,” he added.

To Secrets, Schlapp said that he hopes the poor conservative ratings of some members might spark a change. “We’ve got to elect people who have an antidote to the swamp and the disease of moving left that comes along with it. And I think CPAC plays an important role in that,” he said.