Our friend John Hawkins at Right Wing News has completed his annual, end of the year survey of authors on the Right leaning side of the political divide to determine which public figures, groups and elected officials are viewed the most (or least) favorably among the commentariat. While some of the names may seem like familiar, no-brainers, there are some interesting surprises in the mix, and a few of them serve as an excellent rebuttal to media talking points about who or what generic conservatives like. For full disclosure, the writers at Hot Air were invited to participate in this survey and I know at least a couple of us did so.

I encourage you to check out the entire list and see how your own preferences match up, but the top of the list may be a bit of an eye opener for liberals and media talkers (but I repeat myself) who tend to portray the Right as some sort of monolithic, homophobic, racist block. There was a three way tie for first place.

1) Scott Walker (63)
1) Clarence Thomas (63)
1) Thomas Sowell (63)

Two African Americans and a guy who’s not exactly known for being a culture warrior topped the list. The rest of the top ten include Mia Love (4th), the Boss Emeritus (tied for 5th) and Bobby Jindal at 10th. It’s a pretty diverse group considering that we’re allegedly the party of boring old, straight, white guys.

Who made the bottom of the list? I won’t spoil the entire thing for you, but the last two spots are taken by a father – daughter team. (Was that too much of a hint?) In addition to the Speaker of the House, no less than three anticipated presidential candidates found their way to the bottom of the barrel.

9) Peter King (35)
8) Chris Christie (36)
7) Jeb Bush (37)

Among the other categories I would note from the survey is the list of groups which were rated. There was a huge swing in the responses from top to bottom, rated in terms of how many respondents had a favorable or very favorable response balanced against the unfavorables. At the top was the NRA with a plus 59 tally. Coming in last was the NRSC at negative 23.

Check out the rest of them and adjust the rankings as you see fit. If there is enough interest maybe I’ll see if our resident poll master wants to build one for our readers to compare against the results from this survey.