Moderate Republicans Aren't the Reason the GOP has been Losing Congressional Elections, Conservative Republicans Are

Here's a variation of line I've been reading a lot lately:

We have already suffered huge losses because of liberal Republicans why put up with any more? [sic.]

The problem with statements like this is that the evidence doesn't suggest this conclusion at all.

Between 2006 and 2008, 39 House Republicans lost bids for reelection (at least in general elections, a couple were primaried). Four of those races can be considered outliers due to abnormal circumstances: Mark Foley, Bob Nye, Tom DeLay (big time scandals) and Henry Bonilla (crazy redistricting). That leaves a decent pool of 35 GOP House loses to look at.

Of those losing incumbents, 15 had lifetime ratings of 90 or higher (out of 100) from the American Conservative Union (here are the 2006 figures, here are the 2008 numbers). Eight more had ratings of 80+. (If Wisconsin readers need a gauge from which to work, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner has a rating of 88.). That means about 65% of the GOP congressional incumbents voters told to take a hike during the last two election cycles could be described by at least one measure as being "reliably" conservative, while about half could be classified as "very" conservative.

I'll be the first to admit that this isn't a very scientific way of looking at things. Nearly all of the races GOP incumbents lost in 2006 involved candidates that were tainted by some kind of personal or professional scandal, questions about temperament or some other kind of local issue upon which House races have been known to swing. Still, it's hard to look at these numbers and come to the conclusion that the GOP isn't winning because it isn't conservative enough. In fact, if one only had these figures to work with and none of the pesky electoral context, it would be very difficult to conclude that that key to winning elections would be to demand more cowbell from conservatives.

Just something to consider the next time you hear the Tea bagging brigade going off on the whole Doug Hoffman thing.

[The names of these Congressmen, their home states and individual ACU ratings are included in the comments section (the list was too unwieldy to include on the main page).]