No surprise here!

Does Congressman Blackburn even know any Democrats? From the Tennessean...

Analysis pegs Lamar Alexander as most bipartisan in Tennessee

January 19th, 2010 - When it comes to President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, Sen. Lamar Alexander hasn't done a very good job of following the admonition to not say anything about someone if you can't say something nice. He invoked disgraced President Richard Nixon when he suggested that Obama's White House might be creating an enemies list of political opponents to punish. He said the Democratic health-care reform proposal would slash "Grandma's" Medicare. So it comes as a surprise to find Alexander among the Republican senators who most often supported Obama in his votes in 2009 and who most often voted against the majority of his own party.

Those two nuggets come from the 2009 version of the annual vote studies by Congressional Quarterly released last week. CQ analyzes selected votes to measure party unity and support for the president. On party unity, Alexander shows up eighth among the 40 Republican senators for voting 23.3 percent of the time against the majority of his own party. He ranks fifth among GOP senators for his support of Obama, voting 68.4 percent of the time for the president's position on an issue when it was clearly stated. Overall, the study found that Congress is as partisan as ever and that Obama won a lot of votes in his first year in office.

Blackburn called most partisan

Among the Tennessee delegation, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn was scored the most partisan — and one of the most partisan members of the House — voting with the majority of her party on these party unity votes 98.8 percent of the time. She also ranked the highest among Tennessee House members, and among the highest nationally, for opposing Obama in 88.7 percent of the votes that were studied.

Party unity scores for the other members of the Middle Tennessee House delegation are: Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Murfreesboro, 93 percent; Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Pall Mall, and Rep. John Tanner, D-Union City, both 89 percent; and Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, 83 percent. Gordon ranked highest in presidential support with 92 percent, followed by Tanner at 86 percent, Cooper at 85 and Davis at 83. Republican Sen. Bob Corker supported Obama's position in 54 percent of his votes and had a party unity score of 87 percent.