Joe Carter is doing a four parter on saving conservative political discourse and policies in today’s more-hostile-than-yesterday climate. First, stop the bleeding, he says. Next, let’s kill all the lawyers. No, we’ll do that later. Next, start the breathing.

I don’t know that Joe nails in on every point, but he’s close to the mark. It seems to me there are well-defined conservative ideas and there are well-established conservative people who may or may not hold the conservative position on a certain issue. Calling the person a liberal would be unfair, even if you could make a case for his position on the one issue being a liberal position. That is McCain’s problem, as I understand it. It doesn’t matter to may voters and commentators I suppose that the American Conservative Union gives him an 80+% lifetime conservative record. It matters that on the issues McCain has taken leadership, he has led in a liberal direction. You could easily believe he voted with conservatives on their issues out of party loyalty instead of principle, so as president he would be more likely to lead according to his less than conservative principles.

But I’ll vote for him anyway–at least at this point. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.