WI McCain doesn't shift to the right?

What if, instead of moving quite a bit to the right to try and get the evangelical/religious right in 2008, McCain remains a relative moderate who can have appeal even among liberals such as myself?

Do his chances of winning increase with doing better among swing voters?
 
Since he's never been a moderate and was to the right of Bush on issues like a free press and a woman's right to choose this would be quite a trick.
 
He would have a much better shot IMO. He could pose as a rational, clear-headed guy who would do the right things to lead America, and would target voters who were put off by Obama's wave of sweeping change but also afraid of a long war in the Middle East and a president who would replicate Bush's policies.
 
Does this mean a better choice in running mate? Does he pick Lieberman as he truly desired, or Romney as would make sense?

And although I likely approach it from a different political standpoint myself, I am close to agreeing with Grimm Reaper up there. As a conservative I liked McCain in the 2000 primaries because of his tough anti-abortion stance and stronger fiscal conservative values. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" to me reeked of big government conservatism... which at the risk of not being modest I must say was the correct assessment. Only during the Bush years did he really move to the left, and mostly out of necessity in his role as a policy leader in a narrowly Republican Senate. He needed to be moderate and bipartisan or else nothing would have been accomplished. On much of the stuff on which conservatives disagree with him (immigration), he held a similar opinion as Bush.

Maybe McCain isn't as outwardly religious as Bush for the social conservatives, but the principles were there... he just didn't have to invoke the religion as Bush did to justify the conflict between his social conservative programs and the fiscal conservative principles he would trounce in order to back them.
 
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I think McCain might have done a little better in 2008, but I think Obama still would've won. No Republican would've won in 2008.
 
McCain was still backing his "Rogue State rollback" policy. The people opposed to abortion blasted him not for not opposing abortion, but for his campaign finance reform stance. His opposition to the religious right came only after the smearing he got in SC. Finally, a Bush campaign advisor even wrote a script for a mock Bradley commercial that pointed out McCain's conservative stances.
So, in conclusion, how would he shift left?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The point is moot. If McCain hadn't shifted to the right, he never would have gotten the Republican nomination in the first place.
 
As I understand it, not being American, is that McCain was damned if he did and damned if he did not. He needed to mobilize the core voters on the right and the religeous right - without their organisations and volunteering, especially from conservative churches, he does not have the manpower resources to get his voters out to vote. As voting turnout is so low, it is as important to get the core voters out there voting as it is to attract the middle.

Core voters tend to be dissapointed and focus on the things they did not get and what was wrong after eight years with the same party. So McCain moved right and focused on social conservative issues to get his core voters out, but in doing that he lost the middle. I don't think his choice in Vice Presidental Candidate helped either. Palin seemed (and still seem) far out of her legue, IMHO.

McCain would need something that could give him the core without him moving right (a good Vice Presidental Candidate could do it), more money to match Obama's "every state" strategy and probably some kind of mistake from the Obama camp in order to win. I wonder if he could win at all, but it would certainly be a much closer thing than OTL.
 
The point is moot. If McCain hadn't shifted to the right, he never would have gotten the Republican nomination in the first place.
In the run for the nomination for the Presidency, you run a rightwing campaign if you're a Republican and a leftwing one if you're a Democrat. When you get the nomination and in the general election, you go moderate to appeal beyond your party base and to other areas of your base beyond the rank and file....McCain didn't do that.
 
What if, instead of moving quite a bit to the right to try and get the evangelical/religious right in 2008, McCain remains a relative moderate who can have appeal even among liberals such as myself?

Do his chances of winning increase with doing better among swing voters?

Issue is moot

McCain was on many issues a fairly conservative republican. On a couple of issues he bucked the trend and he liked media attention.

At the end of the day the economy was entering a recession / depression in November of 2008. GOP right or wrong was getting the blame for that economic down turn. As long as that was the key voter issue McCain was NOT going to win.

You would need something to change the voter attitude like another 9/11 type attack near the election or something else to get peoples minds off the economy. Short of that you would need Obama to have a massive gaffe.

Michael
 
No idea.
Presumably, he wouldn't have gotten the nomination in the first place without shifting his image to the right. If he did win the nomination without changing his image or the perception of him in the Republican Party, I highly doubt he would have gotten the nomination. If he did, he could have faced a walkout, or even a 3rd party challenge, from the Christian right wing of the GOP.

And picking the Sarahcuda didn't help at all. She took all the attention away from McCain himself, and became too easily parodied. A more logical pick would have been Florida's Charlie Crist(Current conservative heresy notwithstanding) or Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty, assuming McCain couldn't have gotten Lieberman.
 
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Romney

These days the Republican nominee had to move to the right in primarys. Otherwise they don't get the nomination. Republicans are the defacto conservative party right now. If he dosn't Romeny gets the nomination. The people elect Obama either way. In fact Obamas margin could be bigger.
 
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