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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
(Unverified)Jan 30th 2008 12:53PM
I really hope this is honest -- I've been saying somebody should put this sort of thing together for ages. Now, if only people would actually *use* it instead of voting for the guy with the best hair or the one they've heard of the most...
(Unverified)Jan 30th 2008 2:53PM
Update: I don't love the system they have. They ask you to agree/disagree on a scale of "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree", and I think they would have been better served with 3 options ('agree, don't care, disagree') because they obviously had a hard time matching up source material with ratings. Example: in real life, I probably agreed 95%+ with Fred Thompson's positions. But they only rated me at 74% agreement. Here's one instance of why we differed:
"Thompson said in a column written for the National Review on Jan. 19, 2007, that he supported Bush's plan to temporarily boost U.S. troop levels in Iraq because "the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq are so great." "
They call this "support" (but not "strong support") for "The Surge". I picked "Strong Support", so this actually hurt his score for me. Likewise, they have *four* quotes criticizing and strongly opposing firearms restrictions, then they give him an "oppose" instead of "strongly oppose".
It's so bad I'm actually beginning to suspect the motives of the people running the site. For instance, they say Huckabee "strongly supports" tax cuts, which is insane. They quote him talking about his "100 individual tax cuts" without pointing out that the actual tax burden on residents *increased* substantially during his time in office, so that score is wrong. Likewise, they single out The Flat Tax as an issue, then cite quotes agreeing or disagreeing with that one specific plan rather than simply asking if they favor any simpler tax code of some sort.
Another example: I can't stand Ron Paul (because he is insane -- hello, flamewar!), but I don't like the way they treated this. The give a quote saying we don't need private accounts, we need to stop giving our retirement money to the government in the first place. Then they describe *his bill* to create a lockbox system. Would you say that's "supporting" or "opposing" "Personal Social Security accounts"? If you said "supporting", you're wrong, apparently. Even though the first quote is against private accounts specifically, it still supports keeping your retirement money from being spent today, and obviously the second quote is in the same spirit. But Glassbooth gave Paul a "strongly oppose" for private accounts. WTF?
Anyway, good idea with flawed execution. If they just fixed the position scoring to be more in line with how the candidate actually acts/speaks, it could be a very useful tool.