The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is underway and the host of the proceedings, the American Conservative Union has used the occasion to release its new 2009 conservative rankings for members of the Congress and the Senate.

For the first time since they've begun ranking members of congress on how conservative they are, a majority in both the house and senate have liberal rankings.

In 2008, an astonishing 219 members of the House had an ACU ranking of 20 or less (100 being a perfect score). That number was 144 in 2006 - a clear reflection of liberal success at the ballot box. The senate didn't change as much, rising from 48 to 50 members who received a ranking of 20% or less.

Perhaps more ominously, the number of Republicans in the House who scored 80% or better was down significantly. Only 147 members beat that score down from 172 in 2006.

The issues used by the ACU to compute the rankings were a good cross section of spending bills and issue oriented legislation. On the senate side, taxes, abortion, and earmark reform dominated the 25 issues the ACU used to figure how conservative a member voted. The House issues were a little different with energy, abortion, and missile defense made part of the equation.

Senator Jim DeMint was the only GOP senator who had a perfect score of 100. Twelve Democratic senators earned a "perfect" zero.

Perhaps we should send them a copy of the Constitution.

The list is not online yet. When it is, I will link to it.