This is a preview of the RINO Report that will come out after the votes of April 6 (Crossover day – when the NH Senate’s bills go to the NH House and the NH House’s go to the NH Senate).
We want to thank Spec Bowers for this Op-Ed. Please submit yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
I have crunched the numbers – i.e., the voting records of the first half of this year – to determine objectively which members are RINOs – Republicans In Name Only.
I looked at every vote where (a majority of) Republicans voted opposite (a majority of) Democrats. I ignored votes where both sides voted the same. A RINO vote is when a Republican votes with Democrats against a majority of Republicans.
Almost every Rep at one time or another casts a vote the same as the Democrats. One example is when a Republican votes against the budget because it is too large while the Democrats vote against it because they think it is too small. Thankfully, such votes are not common.
Most Republicans only rarely vote with Democrats against other Republicans. Looking at all Republicans, the median RINO score was 5.1%, meaning that on average they voted with Democrats only 5.1% of the time. Anyone who voted as much as 10% of the time against fellow Republicans is a bit out of the mainstream. Anyone with a RINO score above 15% is definitely outside mainstream Republicans.
Here are the ten worst RINOs so far this year:
Sadly, four of the ten worst RINOs are from Belknap county. For most of the last 10 years, Belknap Reps had the best voting records of all counties. This year, they have one of the worst.
At the other end of the scale, there were six Reps with perfect RINO scores of 0%:
