House Republicans tend to be authoritarian

[Jake]

I think the fact that I've seen that quadrant be called a whole bunch of names (populist, communitarian, etc.) pretty much removes any proof that House Republicans are authoritarian.

EDIT: And the methodology for the economic votes is braindead. Of course, choosing amendments to remove pork (which got between 40-80 votes, almost all Republicans) as half your votes will result in extremely low average scores.

[Jake]

If Ron Paul's in any way representative of what they'd act like, you'd certainly see some extremist rhetoric.

[Jake]

jfern or anyone else. Where does this originate from? Did someone take all the positions off of On The Issues and plot them on the graph or does this come from a certain website besides the blog that was posted?

A libertarian Democrat website picked a bunch of votes from 2005 and 2006. Half (19/40) of the economic votes are on a slew of amendments Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced to cut pork. None of the amendments got more than 40-80 votes when they were brought up. That's why you're seeing severly skewed results here. The results show merely that most of Congress (and almost all Democrats) are interested in maintaining the pork culture in DC, not that Republicans are economically liberal (and by that 'authoritarian'.

[Jake]

I'm working on cleaning up this data, but removing the pork votes. I'll see what I can post in the next few days.

[Jake]

Why would anyone remove pork and then claim that it is somehow balancing this debate?  Voting for pork = supporting a larger government, more spending, and more taxes.  I don't see how it isn't leftist in nature.

It's not leftist or rightist. It's something incumbents do, as shown by the cross party nature the amendments were defeated.