McCain and Bush Joined at the Hip?

Not quite, according to an analysis by John Lott (h/t Special Report):

Barack Obama says John McCain represents a third Bush term and that he has voted with the president 90 percent of the time.

But senior research scientist John Lott at the University of Maryland writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer "the 90 percent figure from Congressional Quarterly is nonsensical" and says most of those votes were just procedural. He adds, "Obama might want to be a little careful with these attacks, as the same measure has him voting with Democrats 97 percent of the time."

He cites research from the right-leaning American Conservative Union, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and the non-partisan National Journal. It indicates that from 2001 to 2007, McCain voted to the left of most Republican senators and to the right of most of his Democratic colleagues. Americans for Democratic Action even says McCain voted liberally 24 percent of the time — twice as much as the average Republican.

That last sentence brings back a lot of bad memories.