What is it with Moderate Heroes...

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

^^lol!

As for a serious answer to this, I don't know if I'm the most qualified to give one, but I could get you started with telling you to research the neoconservative tradition and how it formed. I'd imagine many of these were inspired by those former economic moderates/liberals who didn't want to associate with the hippies, particularly domestically as you can imagine with social liberalism just becoming a thing. That's the start of the Republican hawk tradition. They were never going to become full fledged repeal the New Deal righties. Even Santorum avoids that economic rhetoric to an extent.

Foreign policy is also likely their special interest so they just take the sane position on other issues.