What’s with all this ‘82 percent’ ACU approval Bulls**it? Whatabout the:OpenBorder/Judges/14/Taxes/NoWaterboarding/DumpGitmo/WakkoEnvironmentalism/NotoAnwar/ACLUJihadism?This is not 18 percent ‘bad’, it means the destruction of the GOP.
Ah-ha, you've seen through this '82% ACU' bs too.
The thing is the ACU's rating is based on actual sit down yay-nay votes cast. Not voice votes, not what happens in some committee, or some back-stabbing deals with Democrats. And for 2006, the last year available on the ACU site, McInsane's ACU rating was a ... 65. And that was based on 27 Bills that the ACU cared about. That's all - 27 stinking Bills and votes. And after getting trounced by Dubya in 2000, the petulant vindictive McInsane's rating was a 68 for 2001. (IIRC that year was based on 24 Bills and votes cast).
Add to that the Votes that McInsane bolted on and voted with the Democrats - those are the important ones. It takes some digging on the ACU website to get into the details, but the bottom line is McInsane is no conservative and if all was factored in (like you mentioned), he'd likely rate with most democrats, like a Joe Biden.
So when I see an ACU rating touted I start digging. Its misleading as heck plus an 82 rating isn't that high anyway. And if one is to compare, John Kyl has a lifetime rating of 96.9% for 20 years to McInsane's 24 years.
You’re right. McCain’s allegedly high ACU rating is misleading. He was a solid conservative for most of his early years in the Senate. Those years, when he scored very high, are now helping to keep his average up. McCain began drifting to the left when he ran for president in 2000. The press decided early on in that race that they didn’t like Bush, so McCain decided he had a shot at courting them. To do that, he had to move to the left. It created a vicious cycle. Every time he moved to the left, the press praised him. His ego shot upward and he wanted more such praise, so he moved to the left some more.
This ended up backfiring because the GOP primary voters didn’t want someone who had moved leftward. Combined with his natural bad temper, his effort to position himself as a “moderate” bombed and Bush routed him. But by then McCain was hooked like an addict on being fawned over by the media. And he was jealous of Bush for beating him, so he knew that undermining Bush would get him more and more publicity.
McCain knows he can’t completely go over to the left and win the GOP nod. So he continued to vote conservatively on many proposals that had already reached the floor, and where his vote wouldn’t make a difference one way or another on final passage. This keeps his conservative rating on actual roll call votes up in the sixies, which is hardly impressive but isn’t nearly as bad as Obama’s zero ratings. But McCain works behind the scenes to scuttle conservative proposals so that they never reach the floor. He goes over to the left on issues where he feels conservatives have been too “whipped” by Political Correctness to resist very much. So McCain’s liberal votes are mostly on issues where the soft totalitarian political atmosphere prevents conservatives from fighting very strongly (same-sex “marriage”, alleged torture at Gitmo, campaign finance reform....).
Immigration is a good example, though it almost backfired on him. McCain reasoned that the word “racist” is such a political silver bullet that no one but a few fringe types would dare rise up against amnesty. This is why he, Kennedy, Hillary, Obama, Graham, and unfortunately Bush, screamed out terms like “racism” and “bigotry” so often during the debate. It was designed to bully people into submission. But conservatives on occasion rise up against PC enough to fight back, and they scuttled the amnesty bill. McCain sank like a rock, but as the issue has faded, people’s notoriously short memories have allowed him to rebound. The press has downplayed the issue (to help McCain and the Democrats). And, of course, McCain has lied and denied supporting amnesty.
That’s the true John McCain. A guy who’ll screw us big time if he stumbles his way into the White House.