McCain is not a conservative

Immigration - Finally, at least, my opponent has laid out what he believes is the conservative stance here. However, I would make three points against what my opponent is saying. First, my opponent failed to address my points about amnesty and the Real ID card, where I said favoring the former and opposing the latter show common sense and respect for the Constitution, rather than liberalism. Second, conservatives certainly aren't united on this subject. Consider the fact that the #1 Republican in the nation, president Bush, agrees with McCain here. And third, Republican voters have proven that they aren't really all that opposed to McCain here - consider the fact that he's pretty much been nominated. McCain-Feingold - It doesn't seem like my opponent read through my point on this AT ALL. For his benefit, and for the benefit of anyone who is confused about what I said now, this is the essence of the point I made: "I would count this as a strike against McCain -- but not necessarily a strike against his conservative credentials (which is what we're talking about), because I don't see how it's liberal at all. It seems to me like the sort of thing BOTH sides would oppose, but that came up because of its obvious benefit to incumbents." My opponent apparently missed this point entirely, instead making a straw man argument, saying that I didn't see a problem with McCain-Feingold, which of course would be ridiculous. My point, that McCain-Feingold was just pro-incumbent and had nothing to do with being conservative or liberal, was only addressed by my opponent in his last sentence here: "Its an obvious problem for conservatives because conservatives like the constitution and this bill's reputation is notoriously liberal and has McCain's name on it." Let's take this apart piece by piece. "Conservatives like the constitution": Clearly. This is why they passed things like the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which completely revoked the right of habias corpus, something that is specifically given to the people in the Constitution. This is also why, for the 6 years they had control of both houses of Congress on top of the presidency, they allowed an enormous increase of presidential power, even though the president is NOT granted the title of "the decider" in the Constitution, and in fact is LIMITED in his powers and rather SUBSERVIENT to Congress in the Constitution. Next - "this bill's reputation is notoriously liberal": I disagree. This bill's reputation is notoriously stupid, and self-serving of incumbents. There's nothing liberal about that at all. Furthermore, liberals are in general hardly in favor of reducing civil liberties; this is something conservatives, on the other hand, have taken to quite nicely since 2001. My opponent's repeated point that McCain-Feingold was a liberal bill simply does not hold water. Big government - I most certainly did not "admit that McCain is big government." I just said that being for small government is not a vital part of being a conservative anymore. I wasn't conceding the point; I was merely saying it's rather irrelevant. This is shown very well through Ron Paul's candidacy; he loses because he doesn't get enough Republican votes. Everyone who knows anything about the race at all knows he's staunchly for small government; even when the news media made fun of him (for instance at the debate when one of the moderators laughed at the question about Paul's stance on the IRS), they were making fun of his small government stances. So what it comes down to is: He's the small government candidate, and he gets single-digit percentages in virtually every state. It's not hard to put two and two together and realize that conservatives don't care so much about small government anymore. Fiscal conservatism - Again, my opponent demonstrates that he hasn't been reading my posts very carefully. He tells me that I "need to look at things objectively and take a look at his record", when in fact that's just what I did by giving a Wall Street Journal article that goes over McCain's actual voting record on all the tax votes since he's been in Congress that the ACU considers "key votes". The fact of the matter is, other than his opposition to Bush's tax cuts - which he opposed because a)they weren't accompanied by spending cuts and b)he didn't get the cap on earmark spending he was promised as part of it - he has voted on the conservative side on EVERY "key vote" dealing with taxes since he's been in Congress, INCLUDING voting to make Bush's tax cuts permanent in 2004. McCain's record speaks just as strongly as his promises here, and my opponent fails repeatedly to address that with solid facts. Foreign policy - ...And here, my opponent didn't TRY to justify his second round attacks on John McCain, that he "doesn't have the wherewithall or strategic foresight to manage the complex foreign policy facing our country." Instead, he quickly drops that and takes another route, saying that voting for the surge wasn't difficult. My question is, so what? Does that make that vote less conservative? The point is, McCain fits perfectly in to the modern conservative mold of foreign policy conservatism, and my opponent repeatedly fails to address this. If my opponent wants to contend that McCain is not a foreign policy conservative, then he should do so; everything else he says on this is completely missing the point of the debate, which is whether or not McCain is a conservative. Judges - McCain believes judges should vote on the law, and uphold the constitution, rather than getting involved in petty partisan squabbles. Any judge who rules based on anything other than the rule of law and the Constitution (e.g. their own personal beliefs) is not a good judge; and anyone who supports putting such a judge on the bench is certainly not conservative. Social conservatism - In his last round, my opponent didn't even address this. This means that he agrees with my contention that "social conservatism is the most vital element of today's conservatism", as well as my contention that McCain is socially conservative. This point carries more weight than any of the other points we're debating on, and we both agree McCain has it down.