How Conservative Is McCain?

Those who only casually observe presidential politics assume that the Democrats will nominate a liberal this year and the Republicans will nominate a conservative.

Well, I guess they're right about the Democrat.

Barack Obama has some pretty high numbers from some left-leaning organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union (83), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (100), Americans for Democratic Action (95) and the League of Conservation Voters (100).

And he's got some pretty low numbers from some right-leaning organizations, like Family Research Council (0), American Conservative Union (8) and the National Taxpayers Union (16).

Hillary Clinton has been in the Senate twice as long as Obama, and she's apparently been trying to cultivate a more moderate image.

On the liberal side of the ledger, her ratings are the same as Obama's with the ACLU, ADA and AFSCME, but her rating with the LCV is a more moderate (although still left-leaning) 71. On the right side, the FRC and the ACU give both candidates the same scores, and Clinton is only 1 point closer to the center with the NTU (at 17) than Obama.

By most accounts, there really isn't much difference between the candidates when it comes to political philosophy.

What about the Republicans? Is John McCain a true conservative?

Most of the conservatives I've heard on the radio and I've seen on TV don't seem to think so. Many of them say they will support McCain in the fall because he's more conservative than either Obama or Clinton, but most of them stop short of saying that McCain is a true conservative.

Whatever the definition of a true conservative is.

David Lightman and Matt Stearns report, for McClatchy Newspapers, that "If there's one constant to his 25 years in Congress, the last 21 in the Senate, it's that McCain has voted with conservatives often enough to have a legitimate claim to have been, as he frequently puts it, 'a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution.' But he's also bolted from the right often enough to invite suspicion from true believers."

I guess conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin could be classified as a "true believer." And today, I heard him say that, while McCain barely qualified to be a member of Congress during what is called the "Reagan revolution" (he was elected to the House in Reagan's first midterm election, and he was elected to the Senate in Reagan's second midterm election), he wasn't a "foot soldier" in it.

The Lightman and Stearns article asserts that right-wing misgivings about McCain go back 20 years, back to 1988, when Republicans were choosing the successor to the lame-duck Reagan. McCain wasn't running for president, but he apparently made some appearances for his choice for president, Bob Dole.

Donald Devine, Dole's campaign strategist in '88, says he and his colleagues on the campaign staff "shuddered" when McCain accompanied Dole on the campaign trail.

"McCain was too unpredictable, too respected by Dole and too likely to offer him advice that was at odds with conservative dogma," Devine told Lightman and Stearns. "McCain's never changed, said Devine, now the editor of an American Conservative Union (ACU) Foundation publication. Other Republican activists, as well as people who've worked closely with McCain, offer the same assessment: As president, they say, you never know what McCain might do."

It seems to me that, if he is a moderate, that might make McCain more like the usual Republican nominees in the last half of the 20th century. Most of the time, the party didn't nominate George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater. Most of the time, the nominee has been Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford or George H.W. Bush -- with Nelson Rockefeller, Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey as top contenders if not the actual nominees.

In fact, last year, the History Channel ran a program evaluating Nixon's presidency. Dole was one of the people who appeared on the program and he said he didn't believe Nixon would be considered conservative enough to be nominated by the Republicans today -- particularly with his domestic record.

Nixon, after all, was the president who created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He imposed wage and price controls, he indexed Social Security for inflation, he created Supplmental Security Income (SSI). He also created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and he implemented the first significant federal affirmative action program.

Yet, people forget that the Republican Party only became the extreme right-wing party when Reagan and his supporters took over the GOP in 1980. Before that time, the Goldwater types weren't regarded as mainstream Republicans.

But things are different today.

Anatol Lieven says, in the Financial Times that, if McCain is elected, "a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia."

Today, the talk I've heard is that McCain must choose a "true conservative" to be his running mate if he wants to hold the Republican base in the fall.

And much of the talk I've heard lately is about Condoleezza Rice.

But Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe has her own choice -- Mitt Romney.

Wait a minute. McCain doesn't like Romney. Does that matter?

We'll see.

Who should McCain pick? Who is the best bet to hold conservative votes in November?