When asked whether Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell compromises with Democrats too much, too little or the right amount, 35 percent of Kentucky Republicans said McConnell compromises with Democrats too much, according to a recent Bluegrass Poll.

We realize that small subsets of people express some pretty wacky beliefs. Polls have found that a third of Americans think President Barack Obama was born in a foreign country and that cloud computing involves an actual cloud.

Still, it's worth pondering when a third of Kentucky Republicans think their party's standard-bearer has been weak, when, in fact, as senior congressional reporter Sahil Kapur of Talking Points Memo recently reported, McConnell has been "a ruthless and efficient political operative, (who) has done more than perhaps any other Republican to stymie President Barack Obama's agenda, using innovative tactics like routine filibusters and successfully cracking the whip for total party unity against health care reform."

We can think of two high-profile, 11th-hour compromises that McConnell helped facilitate — both of which averted what would have been self-inflicted economic disasters, devastating to millions of Americans. His actions befitted a top leader in the U.S. Senate.

This eagerness by a third of Kentucky Republicans to flirt with a U.S. government default and economic catastrophe is noteworthy. But it can't be called conservative in any traditional sense of the word.