2000 was my first election and I was a McCain supporter for 2 reasons:
1. he had a fully-functional brain
2. he was not the son of a former President
2000 was my first election too and I was also a McCain supporter in primaries. My reasons were these:
1. He would have beaten Gore easily
2. He seemed more qualified and deserving of presidency than Bush
Overall, McCain's biggest mistake was that he underestimated the strength and depth of Bush's establishment support. Bush had the party apparatus, religious leaders and big donors in his corner. McCain had the MSM groupies, and that's it. He thought he could skate by with that maverick crap, he never really gave the base (any segment of it - social conservatives, military hawks, free-marketers) a reason to like him more than Bush, nor did he give it to party's kingmakers. You can't knock out a frontrunner that way. If Obama acted like that, Hillary would have wiped the floor with him.
Also, the entire "black child out of the wedlock" issue is completely overblown and probably had very little effect on the Republican primaries. It's just an irrelevant story that gets repeated over and over again by liberals to point out that Republican voters (especially them sick, perverted South Carolinians) are despicable racists and Karl Rove the son of Satan.
