“If you think that adding up final scores and finding the mean is “dissecting,” then you are even more superficial than I thought. I’m referring to looking at the votes considered and excluded, and the weight given to each vote, by each group.”
Yes I know that. But as you said, very few of us have the time to look into all that, and each agency rates on different issues. McConnell voted great on taxes for thirty years. McCain did too, which is why his ACU rating is so high. But how did they vote on abortion, amnesty, or any of the other conservative issues. An average gives a broad perspective and can be used as a tool to compare one senator to another, and to prevent a politician from deceiving the people.
I understand perfectly well the wisdom of aggregating different vote ratings and computing the average; I do that myself with my Almanac of American Politics in hand, where I add the vote ratings for three conservative groups with different perspectives (Club for Growth (economic conservatives), Family Research Council (social conservatives) and ACU (overall conservative)) and then I subtract from 100 the vote ratings for each of three liberal groups with different perspectives (AFSCME (labor), League of Conservation Voters (environmentalist) and ADA (overall liberals)) so that, for example, a 20% score from the liberal LCV becomes an 80% “conservative score,” and then I divide the whole thing by 600 to get a conservative percentage. I think that it is important to look not only at how conservative groups grade votes, but at how liberal groups do so, in order to avoid being fooled by faux conservatives like Justin Amash who boast of high ratings from the Club for Growth and from that Paultard group but who are among the most liberal Republicans according to the liberal ADA.
As for McConnell’s 90+ ACU career rating being due to him “voting great on taxes” 20 years ago, the fact is that his single-year ACU rating for 2012 and 2013 was higher than 90 in each year. I’m sure that you can point to a few votes where he was disappointing, but it is simply not true that he has voted more liberal during the past few years. Admittedly, McConnell is far from perfect, but there is a HUGE difference between him and a Democrat.
Oh, and check this nugget I found in a recent article about Thad Cochran (you know, the Southern Republican longtime Senator who actually deserves to be replaced, and God willing will be defeated in the upcoming primary):
“When Republicans won the House in 2010, they helped bring about an end to the long-cherished practice of congressional earmarking. During the lame-duck session in December 2010, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) rallied Republicans to kill a proposed omnibus spending bill that was loaded with earmarks, including more than $500 million that Cochran had requested.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371266/pulling-pork-andrew-stiles
The GOP only had 42 Senators in December 2010, and one of them was pork king Cochran, so it was quite a feat for McConnell to pull that off. He does have his moments.