Q&A of the Day – The Liberty Score Vs. The Heritage Foundation’s Score
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio How about a Q&A comparing Heritage's methodology to Liberty Score's?
Bottom Line: I heard from a number of listeners last week who took exception to my questioning of Matt Gaetz’s motives in ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, but also of my questioning as to how conservative his voting record really has been. As I stated in breaking down his voting record last week: Gaetz isn’t even close to being the conservative standard bearer in Florida, let alone the House – at least according to the Heritage Foundation’s standards. I can’t specifically speak to whether Gaetz is just an attention seeker or whether there’s more to this...or if perhaps it’s a personal vendetta against Kevin McCarthy for reasons unknown. I’ve reported and you’re welcome to decide what you think is at play here. As illustrated, according to the Heritage Foundation’s scorecard of the current Congress, Gaetz’s voting record has been more conservative than only 69% of the Republicans in the House. Following the ouster, in sharpening my commentary on how Gaetz and his seven Republican allies carried out the ouster I offered this: Gaetz and these seven Republicans aren’t conservative standard bearers. As I’ve evidenced, their actual voting records don’t reflect that reality. They were obstructionists last Friday. They sunk spending bills advanced by the House Freedom Caucus because they weren’t interested in conservatively legislating. They were only interested in obstruction and destruction of the House under McCarthy. These are selfish people, not heroes finally standing up for conservative values. We’re spending more in this country today because of what they blocked last Friday – not less. Matt Gaetz and his ego won out. The country, most especially actual conservatives, lost out. Btw, not one member of Florida’s conservative Republican delegation voted for McCarthy’s ouster. Those critiques brought about disagreements in my assessment in addition to the those citing the Liberty Score, which shows Gaetz’s record in a more favorable light. According to the Liberty Score Gaetz is the 3rd most conservative member of the House in Florida and 4th overall in the state behind Rick Scott in the Senate as well.
In providing the analysis I said this: There’s subjectivity in what’s considered to be a “conservative” voting record. In the era of Trump, I was able to use him as the barometer for that characterization. In the era of Biden that’s not the case. Simply standing in opposition to President Biden’s positions doesn’t inherently mean one’s voting record is conservative. For that reason, I’m going to opt for the Heritage Foundation’s Congressional Scorecard. And the reason I opted for Heritage’s in lieu of another, a la the Conservative Review-backed Liberty Score, is for what Heritage describes as this: The Heritage Action Scorecard is the leading conservative scorecard. It allows constituents to hold their members accountable based on how they vote on specific key pieces of conservative legislation. And that is accurate. While there may be subjectivity in the process, what there isn’t is subjectivity in which organization has the longest and most robust of track record of advocating conservative policy and grading politicians on their voting record than the Heritage Foundation.
For those who may not know, the Heritage Foundation was born out of the conservative movement in the early 70’s which opposed Republican Richard Nixon’s progressivism. The Heritage Foundation came to prominence with the Reagan Administration. Quoting the great William F. Buckley, Jr.,: "The foundation had a great hour when Ronald Reagan was elected president and found waiting for him three volumes of Heritage material designed to help him chart the nation's course in the right direction. Sixty percent of the suggestions enjoined on the new president were acted upon”. And in fact, by the conclusion of the Reagan Administration, there proved to be no more influential organization during his presidency than the Heritage Foundation. Quoting Reagan upon leaving office: Heritage was a "vital force" in Washington during his administration and that "Mandate for Leadership" was a "warning shot telling the liberal establishment that … they could not expect to carry on business as usual."
So, let’s fast forward to today. Some have questioned Heritage’s conservative bona fides in recent years. But consider this. The most influential organization advocating policy in the Trump administration was – you guessed it – The Heritage Foundation. President Trump adopted 64% of the Heritage Foundation’s agenda, like Reagan, making it the most influential policy organization in the Trump administration. As recently as last year Donald Trump provided the keynote address to the Heritage Foundation’s annual event. And it’s for these reasons and 25+ years of working alongside the Heritage Foundation, that, in a subjective process, I opted to use their scoring. None of that is meant as a slight to Conservative Review, which is owned by The Blaze, but that has only been around for 9 years and hasn’t had anywhere near the conservative influence on policy that Heritage has had historically or recently. And that takes us to the methodology of the scores.
The Liberty Score measures this: Conservative Review’s Liberty Score® grades members of Congress on the top 50 votes over a rolling six-year term. A letter grade is assigned to each member to help you quickly determine whether a lawmaker is supporting conservative principles.
The Heritage Scorecard measures: The Heritage Action Scorecard measures votes and co-sponsorships to show how conservative Members of Congress are. We update the scorecard weekly when Congress is in session, ensuring the scores reflect the latest activity. Updated scores help conservatives hold their Members of Congress accountable.
This takes us to the two fundamental differences between the scoring systems. There’s one that’s a six-year running total of votes aggregated into a score. There’s another accomplishes much more. Heritage has a “lifetime score” and a current session score. And as mentioned it’s updated weekly. I’ll explain why that’s especially relevant in a moment but first here’s Gaetz’s Heritage Score:
- 84% in the current session with a 90% lifetime score
And Gaetz’s Liberty Score:
- 84%
Notice something there? There’s not exactly much distance between the two? But here’s where there is a difference. The Heritage Foundation’s scorecard shows us that Gaetz’s voting record has been trending towards the left most recently. With the six-year rolling average provided by Liberty you’d never know that’s the case unless you kept a spreadsheet of what they'd given him overtime. This is where I have a fundamental disagreement with the approach of the Liberty Score. What matters more at this point. How your elected representatives voted on issues six years ago or today? You can call this the Charlie Crist effect. He went from being a right-of-center governor of Florida to one of the most liberal members of congress within three years time – let alone six.
- Crist’s Heritage Score: 0% in the previous Congress he served in and 1% lifetime
Ironically, for those who think Liberty is the more conservative organization these days..
It’s splitting hairs because both graded Crist accurately as a hard-core leftist, however Liberty did provide Crist with a score that was literally 4x more conservative.
So, there you have it. The bottom line is that Gaetz, by way of voting record, has never been more inclined to vote with Democrats than he is right now – just as he did in ousting Kevin McCarthy. It’s a demonstrable fact that while still more conservative than most by either scoring system, he’s steadily been trending towards the left at a time in which we’ve never needed stronger conservative leadership than now in standing up to the Biden Administration. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. Those, even in a subjective scoring system conversation, are the facts.