Dana Milbank misses the point while pointing it out

Just read his article in the Washington Post and a sentence just cried out to be commented on.

Who's a real conservative? It's all relative
by Dana Milbank
A couple of weeks ago, in a column about how conservatives are cannibalizing the likes of   Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bob Bennett of Utah, I had the nerve to describe Murkowski, a member of the Senate GOP leadership, as a "faithful conservative."

"Dear Mr. Milbank," began an e-mail from Myron Ebell, a climate-change skeptic at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "Your column today would be more convincing if its broad assertions had some connection to facts."
[....]
I took Ebell up on his challenge. What I found was astonishing -- although not in the way he had supposed. Comparing the ACU ratings of Murkowski and Bennett with those of other Republicans in the House and Senate going back to 1971 (the first year in the ACU online ratings archive), I discovered that if conservatives were to employ the purity standards they applied to Murkowski and Bennett, they would have rejected many, if not most, of the leading Republican lawmakers of the past 40 years.

"Dear Mr. Milbank," I wrote, "that is the point. That IS the reason for the tea parties."