During the 2008 campaign, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) complained about

then-Senator Barack Obama not wearing a flag lapel pin without wearing one himself.

Now he's complaining that conservative groups think he's too liberal.



House Republicans have a grade for conservative interest groups that apply a litmus test to their every action: F. The outside groups have become more aggressive and punitive in recent years, and the criteria they use to rate Republicans’ purity are constantly shifting, sometimes within hours or days on the same topic. That’s inspired a fiery backlash from folks who suddenly find themselves branded apostates by organizations they once saw as allies. [...] “We are in an atmosphere … that every vote is a litmus test for some interest group and interest groups are demanding more and more that you sign this pledge, that you vote no,” said Rep. Jack Kingston, a conservative from Savannah, Ga.

Poor Jack Kingston. He just can't catch a break. If only he knew somebody in a position of power, he could stand up to those interest groups and tell them to get lost instead of complaining about how they score his record.

Kingston is particularly upset about his 77 percent score from the Heritage Foundation's political arm, Heritage Action. He thinks it underestimates his wingnuttiness, and if you've ever listened to one of his floor speeches, you know that his wingnuttitude is not something he wants to be underestimated. And he has a point: Heritage doesn't even rank Michele Bachmann among the top 20 most conservative members of Congress.

Even Heritage is starting to worry about the impact of their scoring system:

How members feel about the scorecard “depends on what their score is,” said Tim Chapman, chief operating officer for Heritage Action. “My biggest concern about the pushback — which has been very strong — my biggest concern is that the intensity of it causes conservatives inside Congress to kind of grow weary and to just feel beaten down.”

Yeah, it's just so sad to see helpless members of Congress like Jack Kingston get beaten down, forced to appease the craziest elements of American politics or accept the insulting designation of being described as merely 77 percent pure. Those millions of Americans who are looking for a job don't know how good they have it, especially compared to guys with real sob stories like Jack Kingston.