He was a Conservative...to the media.
Powell is the perfect example of how a Republican is not the same as a conservative. Sadly, many folks mistakenly equate the two. See "Mitt Romney supporters."
You can stick Mercedes Benz hood ornament on a Fiat, but it's still a Fiat. A statist can register as a Republican, but he/she is still a statist.
The moral of "Top Gun" was that a good pilot analyzes his mistakes and applies what he's learned. I've watched how the Republican party has become so mistaken in its increasing embrace of big-government statist philosophy, of operating by way of allowing statist Democrats to set the terms and then negotiating compromise on behalf of Republicans. I've analyzed the results of my policy of the past 30-plus years of voting for the Republican over the Democrat even when I knew the Republican was a statist.
I've learned that anytime I use my vote such that a statist Liberal Republican wins, I have pushed the Republican party to the left. It was a mistake -- I finally realized with Schwarzenegger -- and now I am applying what I've learned. If a statist Republican is on the ticket who's supposed "80 percent" as prescribed by Reagan is by sole virtue of being registered Republican, my vote will go elsewhere. People who don't like it call it being a "purist." Being a purist is foolish, Reagan acknowleged it, and I hold with Reagan. Being non-discriminatory is just as foolish, and I had formerly exercised ZERO DISCRIMINATION in voting for the Republican even when he/she was 80 percent statist.
I have FINALLY figured out that in choosing the lesser of two evils, which is a frequent fact of life not just in voting but in everyday existence, I must accurately identify which is the lesser evil. The statist Democrat only endangers the here-and-now; Obama's "hope," ironically, is in his galvanizing Americans against him and his party. The statist Republican is the greater evil because he/she sabotages the future of limited government conservatism.