The other day I mentioned that South Dakota’s Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin is now leading GOP rivals by only a narrow margin, and wondered if her constituents were realizing that despite Herseth-Sandlin’s dissents from party orthodoxy, her first vote every year is to empower Nancy Pelosi.
Over at the Club for Growth, Andy Roth lays out how rarely she dissents from party orthodoxy:
She also voted for card check, a $300 billion bailout for Fannie and Freddie, for SCHIP, for Obama’s budget, for a massive increase in the national debt limit, for the FY10 Omnibus, for Davis-Bacon requirements, and for countless earmarks (like Rangel’s “Monument to Me” and the South Carolina Aquarium) .
She has also voted against a handful of free trade agreements, against offshore drilling, against a bill that would stop Fannie/Freddie from borrowing from the Treasury, and against permanent repeal of the Death Tax.
There was a time when members of Congress could campaign as a moderate and then vote in a manner that was much farther to a political extreme than their state or district would prefer. Those days are over.