This blog post on the ideology of our nation's Governors is really interesting. He assigns each Governor a score of zero (liberal) to 100 (conservative). He then looked at exit polls for each state and gave the state an ideology score.
As I expected, most current Democrat governors are more moderate than current Republican governors. I didn't expect it to be this extreme though:
Unlike for the Democrats, there is almost no ideological diversity within the group: essentially all of the current Republican governors are quite conservative, taking moderate positions on at most one or two issues. Also unlike the Democrats, there is no correlation between the ideology of the governors and the ideology of the states. Whether you have a Republican governor in a fairly liberal state like Maine, a moderate state like Ohio, or a conservative one like Idaho, his agenda is likely to be highly conservative.
And then he really threw me a curve ball:
The closest thing to an exception — the outlier in the chart — is Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, who shares some of the moderate tendencies of his predecessor, Jon M. Huntsman Jr.
I guess I need to stop complaining about him so much. I just hope the fact that he is more moderate than the state is as a whole doesn't mean the same thing that happened to Bob Bennett will happen to him.
In fact, this is another reason I'm considering registering Republican in time for primary season 2012. Utah GOP has this insane rule that you have to be registered Republican to vote in the Republican primaries. I will register Republican if it means I can place a vote for Huntsman against Romney (assuming Huntsman is still in the race), for Hatch against Jason Chaffetz or whatever Tea Party candidate runs again him, and Herbert if a Tea Party candidate runs against him. This is big. I never thought I would vote for Hatch or Herbert. But if I have to register Republican and embrace the moderate ones, I think I'll do it- at least in the primaries.
3 comments:
It makes sense! I think I'm still registered Republican, actually; I've never changed it, and I'm not sure if I registered with a party in the first place, but if I did it'd've been Republican. Boo.
Also, in re: the message of the article you read... Big surprise. With Republicans it seems to be all or nothing, doesn't it?
All or nothing definitely describes current Republicans. Hopefully it will get them voted out in 2012, at least in more moderate states.
The very reason I am registered as a republican! More voice/choice...
Post a Comment