will a true moderate be a serious contender for the gop nomination?

[RI]

Not sure if this term applies, but we may get a MINO... (Moderate in name only) for the GOP.

That is essentially what McCain was this year...

[RI]

Not sure if this term applies, but we may get a MINO... (Moderate in name only) for the GOP.

That is essentially what McCain was this year...

McCain has never been a moderate.

Perhaps, but the media had been always labeled him as a 'maverick' or someone who has bucked his party. He was labeled as a moderate, but it was just a name, hence the term MINO.

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.

he was an uber-hawk and supported attacking Iran, torture, and warrantless wiretaps. If anything, Giuliani was the closest thing to a pure neoconservative in high-level elected office. Gun control is a fake issue, and abortion is for the most part also, because Roe v Wade is never going to be overturned. Unfortunately, in contemporary American political discourse, the labels "conservative" and "liberal" are largely determined by two or three social issues.

Giuliani:

Liberal Views
Abortion
"Amnesty" for Illegal Immigrants
Gay rights
Gun control

Conservative Views
Affirmative action
Death penalty
Drugs
Free Trade
Health care
Kyoto Protocol/Alternative Energy (anti-wind and solar)
PATRIOT Act
School vouchers
Social Security (pro-privatization)
Taxes
War In Iraq/War on Terror

Pretty solidly conservative overall, I'd say, at most a lean-libertarian conservative. Three or four exceptions do not make someone a moderate, but it is an improvement over some other names that ran.

[RI]

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. 

I think he was talking about Giuliani.