Pro-choice, pro-gay right, pro-gun control Republican isn't a moderate for you? I know he was extremely hawkish, but otherwise, he was a moderate Republican. Fiscally conservative and socially liberal. He just had an awful campaign strategy and the primary schedule wasn't a help either. If McCain hadn't run, he may have won New Hampshire assuming Romney still imploded.
I might be misreading this, but are you saying McCain was pro-choice and pro-gay rights? I see no evidence of either in his voting record or his rhetoric. In supporting the criminalization of abortion, he does believe in allow exceptions for rape and incest. But so do lots of conservatives. On gay rights, I think McCain said he supported the concept of civil unions. So yeah -- maybe that can be considered a moderate view.
Where I think McCain staked himself out as a moderate was on drilling in the ANWR, immigration, some government spending for social programs that work, guns (though he's hardly liberal on the issue) and on tax cuts in war time -- (a position he changed once the campaign started).
I can see calling McCain a moderate. (I view him as a mainstream conservative, just not theocratic about it.) But either way -- moderate or mainstream conservative -- he was not/is not the sort of person the GOP will look to nominate in 2012.
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