“And I try to take what I learned here from my folks, from all of you, from our community, just sort of right down the middle politically, right down the middle financially; try to bring good common sense to making decisions and get this country back on track.”
That’s U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., speaking at the opening of a field office in June, according to this video from The Colorado Independent’s Joe Boven.
It echoes comments Perlmutter has made in the past about the 7th Congressional District, which he won in 2006, succeeding Republican Bob Beauprez.
“It is right down the middle politically. It is right down the middle financially. It’s not rich. It’s not poor. It’s not Democrat or Republican. It is right down the middle as an independent kind of an area,” Perlmutter said, according to the Congressional Record of Jan. 16, 2008.
So, does Perlmutter qualify as “right down the middle” on political and economic issues? Let’s see…
- He’s gotten straight ‘F’s the past three years from the National Taxpayers Union.
- The National Journal rankings of Congress found him more liberal than his two-thirds of his House colleagues on “key economic, social and foreign-policy issues during 2009.”
- He’s voted with his party 98 percent of the time in the current Congress, according to a Washington Post database.
- That includes Pres. Obama’s big-government agenda of stimulus spending, health-care reform and financial reform. Perlmutter also voted for the cap-and-trade energy bill in 2009, which looks to be gutted in the Senate.
Perlmutter, as we pointed out in March, is an apparent believer in the snow job that government transfers of wealth will somehow result in sustainable private-sector employment.
So, whether or not 7th Congressional District voters find him a suitable representative in November, they won’t find him in the “middle” politically.
[Post updated 7/25/10]
