Posted by
Daniel Crandall on Monday, February 04, 2008 5:30:12 PM
Jeff Jacoby, despite being highly critical of McCain in the past, makes a good
conservative case for John McCain.
Included in Jacoby's list of McCain's conservative qualities are:
"On the surpassing national-security issues of the day - confronting the
threat from radical Islam and winning the war in Iraq - no one is more
stalwart."
...
"He is a spending hawk and an enemy of pork and earmarks. He has never
voted to increase taxes, and wants the Bush tax cuts made permanent for
the best of reasons: "They worked." He is a staunch free-trader and a
champion of school choice. He is unabashedly prolife and pro-Second
Amendment. He opposes same-sex marriage. He wants entitlements reined
in and personal retirement accounts expanded."
Not one candidate forcefully argues for reigning in the leviathan and establishing a limited federal government as envisioned by the Founders, except Ron Paul. Unfortunately, Ron Paul is a force of one on that score even as a Congressman, and he has no understanding of foreign policy and the threat of Islamo-Nazism.
For me, however, it comes down to a matter of trust. Just like I don't trust the government to when it comes to "comprehensive immigration reform", at this point I don't trust John McCain to
act like a conservative. Many McCain supporters offer McCain's
83% American Conservative Union rating. However, this
overall lifetime rating ignores his
65% rating in 2006, and his average rating of 74% between 1998 and 2006. The 2006 rating puts John McCain between such staunch "conservative" Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE), at 64%, and Chuck Hagel (R-NE), at 75%.
What really strikes me about McCain's ACU rating numbers is how much he fluctuates, from a low of 65% in 2006 to a high of 96% in 1994. This makes me wonder what his rating might be as President over the next 4 years.