Ohio candidate for governor Ken Blackwell cites a recent Warren Tribune-Chronicle editorial mentioning us:
The political action group Irregular Times supports [U.S. Representative Ted] Strickland. It gave him a “Regressive Conservative Score” of zero, meaning he has acted to support zero percent of what the group’s propaganda calls “a slate of conservative, wrongheaded policies in the 109th Congress.” The liberal group proclaims, “We are happy to report that among the political decisions by Representative Strickland that we have tracked, not one qualifies as regressively conservative.” Just how liberal is this Strickland supporter? Irregular Times proclaims its hatred for the president, and its Web site offers, among other things, a Dennis Kucinich 2008 presidential button.
Well, that’s awfully interesting to hear. Unfortunately for the Warren Tribune-Chronicle, however:
1. Nowhere does Irregular Times proclaim its support for Ted Strickland. We don’t even offer a Ted Strickland button or bumper sticker on our Ohio politics webshop. There is no mention of our support for Ted Strickland because, not surprisingly, Irregular Times does not support Ted Strickland. As we’ll see below, Ted Strickland fails in a majority of cases to support liberal causes, which leads us to fail to support him as a politician.
2. We actually do NOT award Ted Strickland a regressive conservative score of zero. We have awarded him a regressive conservative score of 9, indicating his partial support for conservative causes.
3. Furthermore, I’m at a loss to explain why the Warren Tribune-Chronicle and Ken Blackwell neglect to report information from the same page they visited and misquoted earlier. You see, we also give each member of the House of Representatives a progressive action score, a measure of their liberal record. Our progressive action score for Ted Strickland stands at 43 out of a possible 100, indicating that Rep. Strickland has acted to support only 43% of a slate of liberal legislative efforts in the 109th Congress.
4. If the Warren Tribune-Chronicle and Ken Blackwell really wanted to know where we rank Ted Strickland compared to other members of the House of Representatives along the liberal dimension, they could have checked here, where they would have found that well over 150 members of Congress rank as more liberal than Congressman Strickland. This easily places Representative Strickland among the least liberal third of Congressional Democrats.
The Warren Tribune-Chronicle likes to say that it is the premier source of news for Ohio’s Mahoning Valley. Ken Blackwell likes to say he has a distinguished record as an educator. But if they can’t even manage to get their facts straight, how can we trust either the politician or the paper to give it to us straight?
We’d love to talk to Ken Blackwell about this, but the “great communicator” doesn’t even accept comments on his blog. What’s the Blackwell campaign afraid of? I wonder.
I suppose in Ohio if you dip a brush in the “L” word and paint your opponent with it in broad strokes it sticks.
I like the “L” word myself.
Strickland’s not very liberal though, is he? If more people think he is very liberal Blackwell gets more votes?
What’s the deal with the paper? This was an editorial. What’s wrong with the truth? Who owns that paper?
Oh, Laura, I like the “L” word, too. I am a liberal.
Liberal, liberal, liberal!
But Ted Strickland, a liberal?
Give me a break!
This really cuts down the credibility of the Warren Tribune Chronicle down a notch. Maybe two.
Ted Strickland is no liberal. He’s a conservative, Republican-loving, Washington insider.