The problems is that John McCain is not a conservative and has governed as a liberal these last eight years. I believe McCain did this to pay George Bush and the conservatives back for derailing the straight talk express in 2000. You can name call all you want, but many of us believe McCain does not have the temperament to be president and would be worse than either Dem.
We can expect the Repubs to oppose the Dem’s leftist follies, but not McCain’s leftist agenda. He could enact Dem policy and, Repubs would be blamed. McCain is not an acceptable candidate for me or other conservatives including Ann Coulter.
Bush pere was a squish of the same variety. And Ford. And Nixon. And Eisenhower. And Hoover. The only real conservative in the white house since Calvin Coolidge was Reagan, and he had liberal congresses that kept his accomplishments to exactly the same combination of lower taxes and hawkish foreign policy, that all the others managed to accomplish.
You are living in a delusion about how conservative the country and the party have actually been in the past. McCain is square in the middle of what we have actually settled for my entire life. Reagan fought for more, he and Newt are about the only ones who did, and both failed to get anything more than the Bushes etc. Both depended, even to get the chance, on immediately prior liberal overreaching and disasterous policy, and neither could enact a full conservative agenda.
And there have been all of two such occasions in literally 80 years. If you walk away from US politics whenever you don't get that, you might as well give it up for good, and take up knitting.