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Look who Politico calls "Centrist"

September 14, 2009 3:51 pm ET by Jamison Foser

The Washington Independent's David Weigel catches Politico's Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen calling Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray "a centrist Republican."  Weigel explains:

Bilbray was a member of the class of 1994 who lost his old House seat in 2000, then stayed in Washington as a lobbyist for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates “a temporary moratorium on all immigration except spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and a limited number of refugees.” Bilbray returned to Congress in a 2006 special election, which he won in part by accusing his Democratic opponent of soliciting votes from illegal aliens. Since then, Bilbray has maintained a 92% rating from the American Conservative Union, which makes him an “ACU Conservative” in their ranking system. He voted against increasing the minimum wage, voted to repeal the Washington, D.C. gun ban, voted against a ban on anti-gay job discrimination, and voted against expanding SCHIP.

Voting against a minimum wage increase, expanding health insurance for kids, and against banning workplace discrimination puts Bilbray far out of the mainstream of the American people.  And in the last Congress, Bilbray's voting record put him far to the right of most of his colleagues, too -- he was the 79th most conservative member of the House of Representatives, out of a total of 435.  That means Bilbray's voting record was more conservative than more than 80 percent of all members of Congress.

To Politico, that makes him a "centrist." Just like MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell thinks Diane Feinstein is one of the "most liberal" Senators.  And Time's Jay Newton-Small thinks Lindsey Graham is a "moderate."

It's almost as though the media has no idea where the "center" really is.

Tags: MSNBC, Norah O'Donnell, Time Magazine, Mike Allen, Jim VandeHei, The Politico, David Weigel, The Washington Independent, Jay Newton-Small

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    • Author by Limit Corp. Ownership (September 14, 2009 4:51 pm ET)
         
      The center is wherever the suits in the executive offices tell them it is.

      Most of them don't ask, but they know which side their bread is buttered on.
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    • Author by truthseeker77 (September 14, 2009 5:04 pm ET)
      2  
      The independent website "ontheissues.org" graphs congressmen/women's ideologies. They do a pretty good job. Let's see how they rate Bilbray based on his career votes:
      [http://www.ontheissues.org/images/s010_080.gif]

      Compare to Olympia Snowe:

      [http://www.ontheissues.org/images/s040_050.gif]

      and Joe Wilson of South Carolina:
      [http://www.ontheissues.org/images/s010_080.gif]

      I guess Joe "You lie" Wilson is a centrist, too, according to Politico.
      Report Abuse
    • Author by vwcat (September 14, 2009 7:33 pm ET)
         
      alot of the media thinks Liberman is a leftwinger.
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      • Author by classicliberal2 (September 14, 2009 9:30 pm ET)
           
        ...which is ludicrous. I wrote an old piece way back in 2000, when, in Alice-in-Wonderland fashion, Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center tried to present Lieberman as one of the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate:
        http://claslib2.tripod.com/lh/liberaljoe.html

        That article also has something Media Matters should take as a warning--Bozell, like MM above, was using the American Conservative Union numbers to rank the Democrats in congress. Those ratings are often a terrible measure of an elected official's actual performance, though. They're based on a small handful of issues, handpicked to get a predetermined result. In this case, Bilbray is, in fact, an extremely conservative pol, but it isn't safe to rely on ratings from things like the ACU. It's always better to look at their overall record.

        ---
        Left Hook! The Blog
        http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/
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    • Author by National_Insecurity (September 14, 2009 7:48 pm ET)
         
      Parsing closely, the word "centrist" is a modifier to "Republican" and is not meant to stand alone. Going further, one can be a "centrist Republican" and still be at the right end of the spectrum.

      My analytical self truly appreciates truthseeker's graphics. I'd love to see an aggregated scatter chart of all R's.

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