I keep hearing McCain’s defenders talk about his ACU rating as being 82; therefore, they say that he is a conservative on most issues.  Let’s look a little more closely at the ACU rating.

First, the 82 rating is an average of McCain’s 24 years in the Senate (through 2006 – the 2007 rating has not yet been published).  That’s an awfully long time period, so let’s break it into the last 10 years and the prior 14 years.  In his first 14 years, his rating was 88 – pretty good; but in the most recent 10 years his rating is only 74!  Looking at the last 3 years, it’s 72!!  And looking at the last year (2006) it’s only 65!!!  This puts him dangerously close to RINO territory (Collins is 54; Snowe is 50; Specter is 45).  McCain’s rating in the last 10 years is lower than the lifetime ratings of Hagel (85), Warner (81), DeWine (80), Lugar (79), and Voinovich (75) – hardly champions of Conservatives.  In addition, look at the trend as he gets older.  I wonder what his 2007 rating will be – the year of several key votes related to illegal immigration (McCain-Kennedy and related amendments and cloture votes) and arguments about interrogation techniques.

Second, let’s look at the methodology of the scoring used by The American Conservative Union.  The ACU appears to select 25 votes that it considers to be significant covering three broad categories – (1) economic and budget matters, (2) social and cultural issues, and (3) defense and foreign policy.  The weight given to the three categories appears to vary year-to-year depending on what votes occur each year.  Further, the votes omit the influence of public rhetoric promoted by the Senator, e.g., the 2005 ACU score does not reflect his betrayal of Conservatives with the Gang of 14 scheme.  Combining the quantitative ACU approach with some qualitative evaluation may help explain why Conservatives are so uncomfortable with McCain.  Here’s my attempt:

Averaging my final scores in the different categories puts his Conservative Score at 48.  I think that score is more consistent with the evaluation that most Conservatives have – that he supports conservative positions about half the time.  And his support of conservative positions is primarily focused on Winning Wars (“hot zones”) and Controlling Spending.  He is dangerously liberal on Illegal Immigration and Environment/Energy.  I also think he has some serious weakness on National Security in “cold zones” – how to prevent attacks.  And I worry about the judges that he would appoint.

Third, these measures do not address two other areas of weakness – McCain’s lack of executive experience and his temperament.  He has been a legislator for a long time, not an executive.  Getting control of just the State Department and the CIA will take a skilled executive; otherwise these agencies will continue to act against administration policy as they have for the last 8 years.  McCain’s famous temper and his dissembling on at least two issues so far in the campaign (his current explanation of why he didn’t support the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts does not jive with what he said at the time, and his accusation that Romney advocated Iraq withdrawal timetables) bring into question whether his temperament and judgment are appropriate for the office.

Republicans can and should do better.