The GOP has been hijacked by the Republican left.
I’ve been told by people who are supposed to know oh-so-very-much more than I — people like the Round Mount of Failure, Karl Rove - whom that dumb stump-hole Hannity calls “The Architect.”
Karl Rove has been the strongest opponent of conservative Republicans I have ever seen, taking the fight to ANY conservative Republican, but holding fire against liberal Democrats.
And then there’s “National Journal” rating McCain as more conservative than others in the US Senate in 2010:
The National JOURNAL??? Hey, I know, why don't you cite Mother Jones....arguably one of the only publications to the left of National Journal. LOL
The American Conservative Union rates members of Congress - and they rated McCain as a “conservative” with a score over 80%.
ACU has been issuing suspect numbers for a while now. I'm not sure what's happening to them. I've seen them rate my RINO Georgia Senators highly. I'm wondering if ratings can be bought.
Three of the sources you have cited are liberal-leaning, and the fourth is suspect.
So, once again, I ask you: Where in the right tit of Odin did you ever get the utterly mistaken impression that John McCain is 'conservative', or that anyone here says he is???!?
I didn’t say that anyone *here* said he was.
I meant that the popular GOP trope is that McCain is a “conservative.” McCain claims such (when he thinks it suits him), the media echos this claim (when it suits them) and the various GOP establishment hacks claim this (when it suits them).
Even the supposed “litmus testing” organization, the ACU, claims McCain is a conservative. I don’t know whether their ratings can be bought, but their entire measurement system by which they define “conservative” has now been so watered down, I don’t think they know which way is up.
We here at FR are seen as a proctological nuisance to the GOP. We’re the wingnuts, the people who insist on purity, et al... we do know what is and isn’t conservative.
What I’m pointing out is that we should ignore labels and start looking at what someone is actually DOING. And in that aspect, the supposed “libertarian” newbies in the GOP are delivering a whole lot more actual conservative actions than the winkled old tuskers of the GOP, who we all know have sold out and would sell their own mothers to a Turkish whorehouse if peddling her mouldering corpse would get them $100 for their re-election campaigns.
I have yet to see Rand Paul actually DO something “libertarian...” (like actually vote to legalize dope, or abortion, or anything of that matter), but I’m seeing him actually DO things I’d expect out of a conservative. People get all wound up over what Paul says... where I get severely pissed off by what clowns like McCain *do*.