Party Loyalty Is Rule Number One In Congress
Meet the most independent member of Congress. Ron Paul "only" parrots his fellow Republicans on 3 out of 4 votes.
The staff here at Captive American has used Open Congress’s database to compile information on the voting habits of every returning member of the new 111th House of Representatives. The results are not pretty for independent-minded Americans: the average member of Congress votes with his or her party 94 percent of the time.
Republicans are a bit more free-thinking in their decisions, but not by much. The average Democrat mimics the party line 96 percent of the time. For Republicans, the number is “only” 91 percent.
Republican Ron Paul takes the prize for the most independent-voting member of the House. He marches with his fellow Republicans 75 percent of the time. In other words, even the least partisan representative goes along with his caucus on 3 out of every 4 issues.
Some other lowlights from our study:
Only two other representatives besides Paul, Democrat Timothy Johnson and Republican Christopher Smith, have logged a less than 80 percent party line voting record.
A mere 56 out of 385 returning House members voted less than 90 percent of the time with their party. Put the other way around, 329 representatives-or 85 percent of incumbents in the House-follow their party on 9 out of 10 issues.
200 representatives-more than half of all House incumbents-have a 95 percent or above party line voting record.
Democrats Nita Lowly, Jackie Speier, Nicola Tsongas, and Andre Carson share the top spot for the most loyal partisans. They each cast 99 percent of their votes with their fellow Dems.
UPDATE: Our list of party-line voting by representatives is now available for your viewing pleasure (or displeasure) here. Find your own representative. How does he or she stack up?
I think you understate the significance of voting against your party 25% of the time, as Dr. Paul does. You seem to have made a statistical and logical error.
Let’s say all Congresspeople have to be part of a party. Factually this is not true, but ballot access laws and so forth make true “Independent” representatives a rare breed. All representatives are either D or R.
Now, someone who votes with his/her party 0% of the time is not “independent” at all, but an ideologue for the other side. A “true” independent would vote with his party 50% of the time, and against them 50% of the time.
However, it is quite likely that any person will find agreement with the basic philosophy of one of the two parties, agreeing with, say, half of what they have to say (if they agreed with much less, they would likely be more inclined to join the other party instead.) Remember, every Congressperson *has to choose one of the two parties to associate with.*
So, a candidate who has joined a party because he believes in about half of what that party stands for will in fact vote with them 75% of the time, and can be called a rational independent. And that is what I would call the honorable Dr. Paul, our nation’s finest elected official.