RINO or Conservative: Who Scores Best?

RINO or Conservative: Who Scores Best?

If Fred Thompson or Duncan Hunter don't "make it" and it becomes
necessary to vote while holding my nose and puking, I tried to devise a
rational way to determine which RINO (Republican In Name Only) would
make me the least ill. I identified my top issues and prioritized them
based on:

• How immediately an issue could impact the nation- Immediate, Urgent, Serious
  
• The power of an issue’s negative impact on the nation- Devastating, Powerful, Strong and
  
• Once implemented the likelihood an issue could ever be changed- Unchangeable, Changeable.
  

It seemed rational that issues like being conquered by illegal
immigrants or losing the war, being more immediate, potentially
negative and unchangeable, were more critical than even important
issues like Gay Rights or Healthcare. Therefore issues that are more
immediate, more negative and that were relatively unchangeable were
more highly prioritized. I’ve spent weeks researching and
analyzing the candidates’ quotes and votes. I have watched every debate
more than once and spent dozens of hours on numerous websites including
http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm, to make some judgments about
their level of conservatism. Taking into
consideration the, "If their lips are moving, they're lying" factor, I
marked a candidate lower if I thought their stated position was shaded
like with Huckabee on Taxes, McCain on Immigration, Romney on Gay
Rights or Giuliani on Guns. They were marked down a bit even if their
position today sounds rock solid conservative. Consideration
was also given to whom their past constituencies were. They are all
politicians and in past statements or votes they sometimes had to speak
or vote in a way that is a little less than straight forward than they
might have liked. Like every smart husband has to do when his wife
asks,”Do these pants make my rear end look fat?” The way he answers
depends on who his wife is; Eva Longoria or Rosie O’Donnell. I
included two categories usually not even considered, as the first and
second in importance; Stability of Personality and Electability. While
excitement, passion and a certain impulsiveness may be desirable in a
candidate, stability and deliberativeness are necessary in a president.
An unstable personality in a president would be a disaster waiting to
happen. In addition, none of the conservative political
agenda has any hope of being followed with Hillary or Obama in the
White House. Therefore electablity is not a sacrifice of conservative
principle but rather the most important of conservative principles.
Winning and getting something, is better than losing and getting
nothing. Even Reagan wasn’t “Reagan” (the size of both the government
and the budget grew) but it was important for conservatism that he won.
The ranking scale range is:

• Conservative = 10
  
• Conservative tendencies = 8
  
• Moderate or Unreliable = 5
  
• Liberal tendencies = 2
  
• Liberal = 0
  

I separated and subtotaled the top 10 and the top 20 from the total to
see how the candidates compare on the most important issues as opposed
to the total. If a candidate scored in the middle on the total of
issues but the highest on the top 10, I might want to support him.
In the interest of full disclosure I have taken multiple candidate
preference quizzes. They always come out with my order of preference
being Hunter and Thompson numbers 1 & 2 with the others in various
positions depending on the quiz. My desire is for the most conservative
candidate who is also electable to win the nomination. This is
a work in progress. Adjustments to the matrix are made regularly as
other issues come to my attention, issues rise or fall in importance or
candidates appear to change positions. As of now the order of most
conservative to most liberal are: On the top ten issues:

• Thompson- 95/100
  
• Hunter- 93/100
  
• Romney-92/100
  
• Giuliani- 81/100
  
• Huckabee- 60/100
  
• McCain- 49/100
  

On the top twenty issues:

• Hunter- 190/200
  
• Thompson- 181/200
  
• Romney- 173/200
  
• Giuliani- 146/200
  
• Huckabee- 119/200
  
• McCain- 117/200
  

On the totality of issues (33):

• Hunter- 315/330
  
• Romney- 292/330
  
• Thompson- 279/330
  
• Giuliani- 241/330
  
• Huckabee- 203/330
  
• McCain- 190/330
  

Looks like a vote for Mormon Mitt to me considering neither Thompson nor Hunter are going to be nominated.