Did anti-war Mccain voters in primaries know he was pro-war?

[rob in cal]

In going over the GOP nomination fight (I'm having trouble dealing with it, as Mccain would have been my last choice) one of the many things that bothers me is the support that Mccain got from anti-war GOP primary voters. In New Hampshire about 35 % of voters in the GOP primary said they opposed the Iraq war, and Mccain got about half of those votes, with Paul getting a good chunk as well.  I haven't found other states exit polls where that question was asked, just "what is the biggest issue" and among those who put the Iraq war Mccain also did well (of course many of those voters might have been in support of it).
    Anyway, assuming that the dynamic of anti-war voters supporting Mccain continued in other states, does anyone else find this disturbing?  Paul of course would have been a great choice, but even Romney who rarely mentioned it, would have been a better choice than voting for someone who was so strongly for it.
     Of course, anti-war GOP voters might have liked Mccain for other reasons, and voted for Mccain in spite of his support for the war, due to his maverick reputation etc., but I hate to think that many anti-war voters thought that his maverickness meant he was anti-war and voted for him because they thought he was anti-war.  That would be kind of like some socialists voting for Paul because he was against the GOP establishment so much he must be a far-leftist.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Compared to the other mainstream candidates, McCain was in seen as having been in favor of a competently fought war as opposed to how Bush and Rumsfeld had mismanaged it even before the 2008 campaign took off. If you are anti-war and you see your choice as being between someone who favors the war no matter what and someone who favors it only if it can be successfully fought, who are you going to favor?  That said, anyone for whom the war in Iraq was issue #1, likely voted Democrat in both the primary and general election.

[Eraserhead]

I'm sure that the vast majority of them knew what his position on the war was.

[angus]

Did anti-war Mccain voters in primaries know he was pro-war?

It's a stretch.  Back in 2000 we heard McCain embracing neoconservatism.  Like a man who has made a breakfast of two bran muffins and a pot of strong coffee might embrace the last square on a roll of toilet tissue.  Candidate Bush, on the other hand, spoke of a humble foreign policy, free of entanglements such as nation-building.  And this was fairly well reported and widely understood.  One can reasonably assume that the average primary voter is somewhat more interested than the average general election voter, most of whom are bought off in drive-by fashion by political operatives for the price of a carton of cigarettes and a hot meal, so I find rather incredible the proposition that the average McCain primary supporter would be so ignorant.

Then again, could the average gringo even point to Iraq on a globe while they were clamoring to invade it?  According to gallup.com, only 17% of randomly selected adult Americans could do so in 2002.  So it's certainly within the realm of possibility. 

[Stranger in a strange land]

Yes, but McCain's anti-war supporters were likely to be moderate on other issues as well, and McCain was percieved as the most moderate candidate.