McCain, like GW Bush, saw a move to the center as a way to grab minority votes and the “undecided” voters. This is a classic mistake in business, in war and as it happens, in politics.
Success comes from figuring out what you do well and then doing that thing better than the other guys do their thing. The Republicans needed to get the ball rolling with a real and honest conservative agenda including Border Security, Family Values, Smaller Government, and the Sanctity of Life.
When the Presidential Candidate goes to Washington and buys, wholesale, into bailouts for people that made bad decisions THEN blames Wall St. instead of the Democrats two bad things happen. First, true Conservatives lose confidence in his ability to represent their interests and, second, the Democrats become convinced that we're trying to squeeze in on their territory and pull out the “hypocrite” card. The issue with border security works just the same way.
The ONLY areas that McCain took a true conservative stance were on family values and abortion and he CRUSHED Obama on these issues.
Remember, if you don't define your position other people will define it for you and you may not like the results.
Dead on.
The bottom line is you have to nominate candidates that actually believe in something. McCain is the classic example of a guy with no true ideological underpinnings. When the nominee or people associated with the campaign seriously consider Joe Lieberman a potential VP on the Republican ticket it demonstrates they value nothing beyond garnering votes.