Conservatives In The House, Then Moderates In The Senate

[applegrove]

Conservatives In The House, Then Moderates In The Senate

By Harry Enten at fivethirtyeight

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/conservatives-in-the-house-then-moderates-in-the-senate/

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Dave Weigel of Bloomberg Politics tweeted a funny story Wednesday in which Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called Arizona’s Sen. Jeff Flake the “RINO of the year.” (That’s Republican in Name Only.) Indeed, Flake has taken some centrist positions; he was against the 2013 government shutdown and suing President Obama for his executive action on immigration.

If you had tried to tag Flake with the RINO label two years ago, however, I would have been very dubious. Flake, then in the House, was considered one of the most conservative candidates for the Senate in 2012. According to DW-Nominate scores,1 which look at a member of Congress’s roll call votes, he was in the 98th percentile for conservatism among House Republicans in his final year in the chamber. He was endorsed for the Senate by Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund.

But Flake’s election to the Senate changed him. He became a senator in a state in which more Democrats than Republicans were elected to House in 2012. With a more moderate constituency, Flake became more moderate. And Flake isn’t alone in his change of heart.

Since Obama became president, five members or former members of the House, including Flake, became senators from states that Obama won twice or in which a majority of the House delegation was Democratic after 2012. That is, states that could be described as blue or purple.




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