Thompson Only as Conservative as McCain, Brownback and Hagel 80 Percent of the Time
The rest of the time, he’s more conservative: Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson is being described in the MSM as a conservative’s conservative as he mulls a possible presidential bid. But CQPolitics conducted a comparison (follow link, then click on “chart” to download the PDF) of his Senate voting record to that of Republican candidates Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, and potential prez candidate Sen. Chuck Hagle of Nebraska.
The upshot of it is that there’s not much of a difference in their voting records, so Republicans are just going to have to decide between them based on their looks and personalities. Good luck with that, folks.
During the eight years that Thompson and McCain served together, they cast votes on 102 CQ-defined key votes and agreed on 83 of them — or 81.4 percent of the time.
Thompson showed a similar rate of agreement on key votes with Brownback and Hagel. Thompson and Brownback agreed on 57 of 70 key votes (81.4 percent) for which both senators participated. Thompson and Hagel voted the same way on 57 of 71 key votes (80.3 percent) during the six years they served together.
The four senators evince agreement on many legislative issues. Thompson joined McCain, Brownback and Hagel in voting to authorize the current war in Iraq, to cut taxes for married couples, to ban an abortion procedure opponents call “partial birth†abortion, to approve tax-sheltered education savings accounts, and to enact a balanced-budget constitutional amendment.
Among the instances in which Thompson and McCain differed were votes in 2002 to effectively extend a repeal of the estate tax beyond 2010, to authorize oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and to postpone tougher automobile fuel efficiency standards. Thompson voted “aye†and McCain voted “no†in all three cases.
Also in 2002, Thompson agreed with McCain but opposed Hagel and Brownback — and most Senate Republicans — in backing a rewrite of campaign finance laws that barred the national party committees and federal officeholders from raising the unlimited “soft money†dollars upon which the parties had come to rely. McCain was a chief sponsor of that law.
In 2001, Thompson opposed and McCain supported a Democratic bill to bolster the rights of patients in managed care plans. Hagel and Brownback joined Thompson in opposition.
