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Watching my favorite no-spin, fair and balanced news commentary show tonight, The O’Reilly Factor, I enjoyed O’Reilly’s guests discussing why conservatives are spewing sour grapes and insults towards McCain.  But one of his more interesting guests, Monica Crowley (conservative radio talk show host), observed that though he has "failed" on the items in the list below over the past 7 years, his previous record is very conservative.

So what issues to conservatives harp on when criticizing McCain?

  • Illegal Immigration
  • Bush tax cuts
  • Anti torture legislation
  • Campaign finance reform
  • Gang of 14 (trying to avoid needless philibusters, and actually using the lost art of compromise)

On O’Reilly, Monica Crowley aptly said:

For 30 years before that, John McCain has had a long extensive
conservative record of backing tax cuts, and cutting federal spending,
being a deficit hawk, being a national security hawk, and has been
consistently pro-life.

Interestingly, Crowley mentioned that his softer stand on immigration is the most salient sticking point for conservatives, and on this point, I think that conservatives are most lacking.

Just looking at these few items and calling him non-conservative is
a result of believing right wing loudmouths who want someone to match
them issue for issue, else they reject them as "not conservative." 

I know that these issues, esp. taxes, are important to conservatives, but smart conservatives know when to raise taxes, and also, let’s remember that the real important issues to conservatives are abortion and the family.  Right?

Let’s also not forget that the American Conservative Union has given McCain a lifetime score of 82%
(though only 65% in 2006) while by comparison, ultraconservative Rick
Santorum has an 88% lifetime rating (96% in 2006), while Hillary
is a 9%.    See the picture?  McCain not so bad, Hillary and Obama (8%), real bad.

In the end, most conservatives will vote for McCain rather than have a
liberal in the Oval Office.  And those who decide to sit it out because
McCain is not conservative enough are the extremists trying to make a
statement.  IMHO.

SPOILERS

Interestingly, Huckabee, darling of the evangelical voters, has no chance, but is probably stealing votes from Romney.  If so, this will probably prove to be a spoiler for Romney, who will lose on Super Tuesday because of the voters that get siphoned off to Huck.

On the left, looks like Nader is getting back in.  He’s another spoiler.   He might pull the many(?) Democrats who are tired of the Clintons, sick of politics as usual, and don’t think that Obama has enough experience.  But perhaps they’ve already learned their lesson on Nader being a spoiler.  We’ll see.

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