Holding Burr Accountable

You might think that if you're Richard Burr and you're suffering from low approval ratings and the other stridently partisan Republican Senator from your state just got the boot, that with reelection time coming around you might start moving a little more toward the center.

A new analysis from Nate Silver though shows that's far from the case. When it comes to President Obama's agenda, Burr has been the ninth least supportive of the entire Republican Senate caucus. Even hyper partisans like Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have been slightly more bipartisan and the only folks who have been more right leaning are notoriously conservative folks from notoriously conservative states like James Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, and David Vitter of Louisiana. One big difference between them and Burr of course is that their states did not vote for Obama. Burr has been the least cooperative of any Senator whose state did give its electoral votes to the President.

Usually the candidates challenging an incumbent Senator hold him/her accountable for their actions, particularly in a situation like the current one where Richard Burr is working against public opinion in opposing the stimulus and SCHIP. Of course there are no announced opponents to him yet. It's good that Americans United for Change is running radio ads holding his feet to the fire on some of this stuff, but I also hope now that the North Carolina Democratic Party has new leadership that the PR machine will crank back up and start making sure folks know what Burr's up to until an opposing campaign apparatus steps in to take up some of that responsibility.