And Now, Joe Heck's "Moderate" Baloney.

Now that Dean Heller is doing "the moderate dance", Joe Heck is joining him on that dance floor.

This week, the Club for Growth, a politically conservative outfit that advocates low spending and limited government, put out its rankings of the freshman, “Tea Party” class in the House. Heck was hovering somewhere around the bottom.

The Club gave Heck a 50 percent conservative ranking, making him the 13th-least conservative of the 87 freshmen in the House. Overall, he ranked somewhere in the middle: 196th out of 430 representatives whose votes were analyzed. (Members who only served partial terms — like Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei — didn’t get a rating.)

The numbers seem to make sense for Heck, who accepted Tea Party support as a candidate but has shied from vocally affiliating himself with the movement as a congressman. Heck’s office refused to comment for this article.

Ah, so Joe Heck now wants to believe he's "moderate" because Club for Growth didn't give him a top score. Give me a break! Here's the number that really matters.

According to a vote breakdown from the Washington Post, Heck votes with the Republican Party about 90 percent of the time.

Just yesterday, Heck voted to show a blind eye to domestic violence against minority and LGBTQ women. In February, Heck tried to justify his opposition to equal access to women's reproductive health care by saying insurance coverage of contraception "has nothing to do with women's health issues". Joe Heck has been front and center in fighting for the G-O-TEA in their War on Women.



But wait, there's more! Joe Heck just this week called marriage equality "a distraction". Oh, and Heck also belittled LGBTQ Nevadans by saying their relationships should not be respected as "traditional marriage". He cited Question 2, but that was enacted a decade ago. Nevada voters have evolved on accepting LGBTQ equality alongside Harry Reid and President Obama. Yet instead of listening to his fellow Nevadans on accepting LGBTQ families and treating us all equally, Joe Heck is joining hands with Mitt Romney and the rest of the G-O-TEA in encouraging discrimination.

And that's not the only issue where Joe Heck is joining hands with Mitt Romney. Along with Romney, Heck supports Paul Ryan's radical budget that ends Medicare as we know it. He's repeatedly stood by Ryan & Romney, and against Nevada seniors who worked hard to earn their Medicare. And in case that isn't bad enough, Heck also wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, allow insurance companies to deny Americans health care for whatever reason(s) they want, force seniors to pay more for prescription drugs, and increase the federal budget deficit. How on earth is that "moderate"? And more importantly, how does that benefit his constituents?



Perhaps Joe Heck just doesn't care about his constituents. That would explain his opposition to bringing more green jobs to our state. He'll do whatever it takes to protect bailouts for fossil fuel industry billionaires, but do nothing to ensure Nevada's workers get a fair shake and stable work.

So why again are we supposed to think of Joe Heck as "moderate"? Maybe because he's just "moderately" in the pocket of powerful corporate interests? Because he's only "moderately" controlled by the likes of Bank of America and Goldman Sachs? Because he only "moderately" cares more about staying in their good graces and John Boehner's good graces than doing what's best for Nevada? What baloney.