It isn't the first time Bartlett, despite a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 93 out of 100, has clashed with colleagues.
When former Vice President Al Gore appeared last year on Capitol Hill, Bartlett chided colleagues skeptical of climate change, saying that "it's possible to be a conservative without appearing to be an idiot."
When Gore's successor, Vice President Dick Cheney, asked Bartlett to vote in favor of exploring ANWR, Bartlett says, he responded with a question: "If you could drill in ANWR tomorrow, what would you do the day after tomorrow?"
"I don't know that very many of my colleagues are thinking about the day after tomorrow," Bartlett says. With 10 children, 16 grandchildren and two great grandchildren, he says, "I think a lot about the day after tomorrow."
Bartlett now has relented on drilling. He has signed on as a co-sponsor of bipartisan legislation that would open the Outer Continental Shelf to exploration - because, he says, it also includes a five-year extension in tax credits for investment in alternative energy.
That move has opened him to charges of inconsistency from Jennifer Dougherty, his Democratic opponent this fall in the 6th Congressional District.
"He has flipped his position and his votes, so you really don't know what he'll do if he gets elected for a ninth term," her campaign said in a recent release.
Bartlett says there is no inconsistency.
"I have always said that I would vote for drilling when we used the revenues we got from drilling to invest in alternatives, he says. "I have not changed. Other members have changed - they've come to where I've been all along."
