American Conservative Union Ratings

ACU released its ratings the other day for 2005. 12 Senators and 38 House members rated a perfect 100% score, none from NE and only one (King) from IA. How they determine them:

"ACU tracks a wide variety of issues before Congress, ranging from taxes to spending and national security to abortion. Accordingly, our ratings encompass three general categories: (1) economic and budget matters; (2) social and cultural issues, and (3) defense and foreign policy. ACU endeavors to analyze votes from each category in order to obtain a balanced, comprehensive picture of an individual member's ideological predisposition based upon recorded records."

For NE, Fortenberry and Terry both scored a 92, Osbourne an 88. Terry's lifetime score is a 90, Osbourne's an 83. Being a freshman, Fortenberry's lifetime rating is the same. NE Rep. Senator Hagel scored a 96; his lifetime score is 86, perhaps indicating a rightward shift given his possible presidential aspirations. NE Dem. Senator Nelson scored a 60, and possesses a lifetime score of 53, again possibly indicating a rightward election-year shift. It might be interesting to go back and look at recently deceased Dem. Sen. Jim Exxon or former Dem. Sen. Bob Kerry might compare to Nelson's scores.

Over in IA, their Senators and House members are almost diametrically opposed, Sen. Grassly coming in at a 96 (83 lifetime) and Sen. Harkin a 4 (lifetime 9). House members Nussle (92/86) and Latham (84/86) join King (100/96) with highly conservative ratings while Leach and Boswell, representing Dsitricts 2 and 3, have scores of 33/29 and 32/9 respectively. I don't recall ever seeing an Iowa district map, although I know King represents western IA. Interesting how diverse IA's representation is in Congress, particularly compared to neighboring NE. Of course, IA has IL on its eastern border, and WI on the north, both the most likely areas of Dem. voters I'm would guess.