This Ross Douthat piece in the NTY makes a sober point: some conservatives are making the same mistakes parts of the left used to make, namely holding their candidates to a level of purity that even differences on relatively small issues represent deal breakers.
Republican primary voters who turned to Mr. Limbaugh for their marching orders were asked to believe that Mr. McCain’s consistently hawkish record — on Iraq, Iran, the size of the military and any other issue you care to name — mattered less to his standing as a conservative than his views on waterboarding. Or that his extensive record as a free-trader, a tax-cutter and an opponent of pork-barrel spending wasn’t sufficient to qualify him as an economic conservative, because he had opposed a particular set of upper-bracket tax cuts in 2001.
Similarly, religious conservatives who listened to James Dobson were asked to believe that Mr. McCain’s consistent pro-life voting record was less important than the impact his campaign-finance bill had on the National Right to Life Committee’s ability to purchase issue ads on television 60 days before an election. Or that his consistent support for conservative judicial nominees, and his pledge to appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of John Roberts and Sam Alito, mattered less than his involvement in the “Gang of 14” compromise on judicial filibusters.
McCain is clearly no conservative ideologue, and this is why he deviates rhetorically from conservatives from time to time and why his voting record also sometimes deviates. But on the whole McCain's 
voting record indicates that he is basically a man of conservative instincts. One should not concentrate on minor differences in an attempt to prove too much. Douthat's foreign policy example is prescient. Does anyone really think that John McCain is soft on terrorism or is essentially a dove because he is upset about waterboarding, a technique our government has used exactly three times? Anyone who really believes that is just fooling themselves.
McCain's ACU record bears this out. McCain over his career has supported the American Conservative Union position 82% of the time. That's pretty good, I'd think; certainly far from the "liberal in sheep's clothing" some make him out to be. But, some argue, look at his latest rating that has him only voting conservative 65% of the time. See, they say, he is getting more liberal (or less conservative) as he gets older. But if one looks at the actual votes used to tally the score, most of McCain's deviance from orthodoxy pertain to one issue: immigration. Granted, immigration is a major issue, but if deviation on one issue makes one an apostate, then most conservatives are apostates on something. One could also note that McCain's pro-immigration position is similar to that of the conservative paper of record, The Wall Street Journal.
To be sure McCain probably has been less reliably conservative in recent years. But it is easy to overreact and paint McCain as something he is not. Oddly, many conservatives seemed ready to embrace Mitt Romney as one of their own even though a few short years ago Romney agreed with them on virtually nothing. John McCain basically adopts conservative policy positions even if his soul is not ideologically conservative.
Update: For an honest explanation of McCain's ideals, see his victory speech from last night.
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