The Sierra Club is getting blasted by the libosphere today. Kos started it (and Jane and Duncan chimed in) by linking to this article which, before it was altered, said:
The Sierra Club is endorsing Chafee even though the group gave the senator only a 20 percent rating in its environmental scorecard in 2004.
Note that that sentence has now been removed from the article, probably because, although true, it was a little misleading. The Sierra Club has given Chafee a score every year since he came to the Senate in 1999. Overall, his pro-environment score is 68% (54 out of 79 votes), and it has ranged from a low of 20% (1 out of 5 votes) in 2004 to 100% (7 out of 7 votes) in 2000. Last year, his score was 84% (16 out of 19 votes). It may be true that the chance to retake the Senate this year is worth the larger chance that a Bush clone would end Chafee’s obstruction of Bush’s anti-environmental agenda in the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee if Chafee is defeated without the Dems retaking the Senate, but we shouldn’t be playing follow the misleader.
To view the Sierra Club’s ratings of Chafee go here for the 2006 page and then click back through the years.
Cheneyesque cherry-picking, on our side
The Sierra Club is getting blasted by the libosphere today. Kos started it (and Jane and Duncan chimed in) by linking to this article which, before it was altered, said:
Note that that sentence has now been removed from the article, probably because, although true, it was a little misleading. The Sierra Club has given Chafee a score every year since he came to the Senate in 1999. Overall, his pro-environment score is 68% (54 out of 79 votes), and it has ranged from a low of 20% (1 out of 5 votes) in 2004 to 100% (7 out of 7 votes) in 2000. Last year, his score was 84% (16 out of 19 votes). It may be true that the chance to retake the Senate this year is worth the larger chance that a Bush clone would end Chafee’s obstruction of Bush’s anti-environmental agenda in the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee if Chafee is defeated without the Dems retaking the Senate, but we shouldn’t be playing follow the misleader.
To view the Sierra Club’s ratings of Chafee go here for the 2006 page and then click back through the years.