CPAC rates Tennessee 3rd most Conservative State Legislature.

 

by Rod Williams, March 9, 2024- At one time I was a big fan of CPAC. I attended two of their conventions and found them informative, enjoyable, and stimulating. CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference. It is an annual political conference attended by conservative activists and elected officials from across the country. CPAC has been in existence since 1974. 

The organization used to feature popular conservative politician and pundit and also provide scholarly discussions of public policy issues. Unfortunately, CPAC has descended into a Trump rally and a showcase for nut-jobs. Marjorie Taylor Green was one of their speakers this year. There was a time when CPAC was somewhat of a gatekeeper as to who was welcome into the conservative big tent.  They kept out the fringe. Those days are gone.

CPAC is the creation of the American Conservative Union which has been around since 1964. They have probably been the most influential conservative organization in the county. In1971, ACU implemented a numerical rating for how conservative was each member of Congress. I am not sure of the year, but in recent years they have implemented a rating system for the members of state legislatures for each state in the union.

Since I no longer have confidence in CPAC and since some positions that were once seen as conservative are now considered liberal, I no longer put much confidence in CPAC's ratings of Congress. I have not done an analysis of CPAC's scoring mechanism and the votes they include in their score; I am simply suspending my trust in CPAC until they return to normalcy and regain my trust.

I have looked at the list of bills used to score the Tennessee legislature and have looked at a few other states. This is cursory and by no means an in-depth analysis, but I think the CPAC score of state legislatures has value.  Take if for what it is worth, but you can view the detailed report at this link. At that link you can see the score of your individual members of the legislature. 

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