The good, the bad, the bought...

The Public Campaign Action Fund has compiled a list of House members ranked by their relationship to Tom DeLay, using a variety of criteria, including the cash they've received from ARMPAC, the amount they've contributed to the DeLay Defense Fund and the degree to which their voting records match up with the Bugman's.

One particularly handy feature is the ability to search by state, so I took a quick peak at the Washington state delegation, fully expecting to find Doc Hastings at the top of the local list. After all, Doc's compiled the kind of doctrinaire voting record you'd expect from the Congressman from the state's most conservative district (a 96.84% match with DeLay), has banked $5390 from ARMPAC and was installed as the House Ethics Committee Chair in order to oversee the Committee's decline into irrelevancy.

Well surprise, surprise!

Doc actually has a relatively middling ranking of 173 overall, and number three in the state on the PCAF's 'Delay's Pocket' list, just behind the 5th District's Cathy McMorris (who took a little less cash from DeLay than Doc, but votes with him a little more often, winning the #171 spot on the list. Sounds like she sold out cheap to me…)

So who's the local champ?

None other than freshman Rep. Dave Reichert. Reichert, who likes to pose as a fairly moderate, thoughtful kind of guy, someone in tune with the changing ideological makeup of his suburban district (while 8th District voters have consistently elected Republicans to the US House, Democratic candidate candidates for President, Governor, Senator and a variety of local offices have found considerable success there). His 95.24% record of supporting DeLay's destructionist agenda belies any such moderation, though, and the $10,000 in ARMPAC money that purchased such a loyal soldier in the battle to eviscerate Constitutional government lifted Reichert all the way to a #73 ranking.

The lowest ranking (and therefore the best of the bunch)? I'm happy to say that it's my very own personal Congresscritter, Jim McDermott, who comes in at #414. Jim has somehow found himself allied with DeLay 6.25% of the time, but just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, I suppose even Tom Delay has a halfway decent idea about six times in a hundred.

Jim's good (great, even). Hastings and McMorris are bad.

Reichert? Ugly.