Got this from Michael Medved's Blog, a conservative talk show host. I just wonder why if the numbers actually support his conservative stance, why people dont believe he is conservative enough. I don't agree with him on all the issues, but he and I agree on enough to say he is the canidate I am going to vote for in November.
Personnally I am glad some people see him as a left leaning Republican, then the great undecided might see him as a more viable choice then a hard core Republican.
Remember the party die hards in the party do not decide the election it is that great independent 40% or so that make the decision.
McCain's "Radical Left Turn"?
Posted by: Michael Medved at 8:25 PM
Among the many distortions, smears and outright lies concerning the conservative record of John McCain, I’ve been struck by a new effort to discount his solid lifetime voting record of 82.3% with the American Conservative Union.
According to those who desperately desire some reason to discredit the Senator’s conservative credentials, this figure is misleading because it includes his early years in Congress when he was, indeed, a “foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution,” but doesn’t fully register the fact that he’s turned away from his rightist roots in recent years.
A caller to my radio show today accused me of misleading the audience because I cited Johnny Mac’s lifetime statistics without informing folks that in the last seven years he’s taken “a radical left turn.”
To respond to such nonsense, let us herewith set the record straight --- with a little “straight talk” in print.
Here are McCain’s ACU ratings, running from the last year of Clinton’s reign to the most recent available figures (2006)
2000 – 81%
2001—68%
2002---72
2003---80
2004---72
2005---80
2006---65
In other words, over the last seven years, McCain has come within two points of his lifetime average of 82% three times. His average since the turn-of-the century: a respectable ACU rating of 74%.
This doesn’t make him one of the most reliable, ideologically pure of Republican Senators (but he’s never claimed that), but it also leaves him a world away not only from Barack and Hillary, but also from true “mushy moderates” in the GOP who, in 2006, earned vastly lower scores, including Olympia Snowe of Maine (36%), Susan Collins of Maine (48%), George Voinovich of Ohio (56%), Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania (43%) and the recently defeated Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island (24%).
For the record, one of McCain’s biggest critics in the Senate, Thad Cochran of Mississippi (who supported Mitt Romney for President) earned a 2006 ACU rating of 67% -- virtually identical to that of his Arizona colleague – but maintains a lifetime record of 80% (that’s below McCain’s).
In other words, the idea of McCain’s “radical left turn” in recent years is nonsense, as his forthright, specific, substantive and proudly conservative speech at CPAC surely made clear.
Doesn’t it tell you something that Planned Parenthood is already out with a McCain-bashing ad decrying his “Zero lifetime rating – lowest in the Senate” for his “Planned Parenthood Voting Record”?
Anyone who’s earned that kind of hostility from the Abortion Industrial Complex ought to have earned some gratitude from conservatives.
Personnally I am glad some people see him as a left leaning Republican, then the great undecided might see him as a more viable choice then a hard core Republican.
Remember the party die hards in the party do not decide the election it is that great independent 40% or so that make the decision.