The truth of the matter is McCain would have stood a chance or even won if the economy was sound and a month before elections it tanked. Not we have Obama to take care of the economy, Iraq, Iran, N. Korea, Israel, and all the other things which he is bound to screw up in at least one.

Its pretty easy to piss off the portion of your party who accepts nothing less than absolute servitude to their beliefs.  And just as many of them were against McCain's past record on principle in spite of the fact that McCain had moved to the right.

Examples: appointment of Sarah Palin (as opposed to his first pick, Lieberman), support of the Bush tax cuts (which he originally voted against), stronger anti-abortion stance (originally supported changing the Republican platform to include certain exceptions, but he renigged on this), stronger rhetoric on appointing conservative judges, moved more to the right on immigration (he actually proposed a fairly modest proposal in 2006), originally against the President's wiretapping program (later chose to support it), used to believe that the enemy combatants detainees deserved some level of judicial oversight (but later sided with the Kafkaesque policies of the Bush Administration), moved to a more pro-torture stance, thought gay marriage should be allowed (but then changed his position), McCain used to be for the moratorium on coastal drilling (but reversed that in line with the drill-baby-drill line of though), and used to be for the cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions.

I think that is enough examples of how McCain shifted to the right to make my point.

Obama made a few shifts. They were just ignored. So those don't prove a shift. That's just the same BS logic used to claim Kerry was a "flip-flopper".

This seems more like you insisting McCain should have stayed in absolute servitude to your beliefs.

I never made any claims about Obama or John Kerry, and yes Obama did make shifts, but he did EXACTLY WHAT I SUGGESTED MCCAIN DO EARLIER, he shifted to the center, which was a smart move politically.  Whether or not those shifts were real ones is another question, although his behavior after he got elected suggests the Obama is trying to govern from the center and that it was more than just political foreplay.  McCain didn't even really need to shift, he was in a pretty good spot politically to reach out to most Americans.  He just decided to shift more to the right, which ended up costing him.

I'm not getting into the ethics of what any of these politicians have done, I am getting into the political viability of those choices.  I like McCain a lot, to this day, but he ran his campaign like an idiot.  It has nothing to do with my beliefs or what I wanted him to be.  This whole discussion is about how politically viable his choices were

If McCain was in absolute servitude to anyone, it was the wrong people, his political party.  Moving to the center is often the only way to get yourself elected.  In spite of all McCain's maverick talk this seemed to be the hardest thing in the world for him to do.  I blame his political advisers more than him, but McCain still doomed himself from the start by taking their advice.

And for the record, I like McCain in spite of his escapades during the election.  This article is perfect proof that he is still a good guy.  I just want him to be his natural self, which fortunately he appears to have done.  I just think he ran his campaign very poorly.

McCain did not run his campaign that way. The news media just made it look like it.

And Obama did not shift to the center. He was actually solid in his stance of change and hope, even of that struck a lot of us as rhetoric.

But again, it was the economy that hurt McCain more than anything. No matter how much you want to pretend McCain could have done something, he couldn't have. When the incumbent party screws up enough, voters throw that party out, ni matter what the next guy is like. Polls proved it, because they were evening up until it was clear the economy was in the tanker.

 Lol change and hope are leftist ideas? Both parties want to fulfill their ideals, that requires change. I'm sure you could say both parties even 'hope' that their ideals actually happen. 

"Lol change and hope are leftist ideas?"

I did not claim that. You missed the context of that comment.

1) Ohhh boy, I've already told you that McCain was the favorite son of the media for the longest time.  You can use this argument for some candidates, but not McCain.  McCain got negative coverage because his campaign went negative in a time when there were big issues that McCain was simply trying to dance around by attacking the candidate.  He claimed to be above this for years.  Should the media ignore that?  And the media even treated McCain like a hero for over a decade.  You can't just throw the phrase liberal media out on the table and have it solve this issue.

I guess you just ran out of arguments and reached into the old bag of tried and true liberal slanders. I can imagine it now.  You must have said, "Hmmm, global warming fearmongering?  No...big government is evil?  No, that won't do it either.  OK, I got it this time, judges legislating from the bench!  Oh crap...no wait, the LIBERAL MEDIA!"  I'm not saying you yourself are conservative, but your arguments are extremely myopic in scope.

2) This makes no sense whatsoever.  The candidate who is usually elected is the most hopeful one and has the best vision.  People don't like doom and gloom.  This is fundamentally a centrist ideal.  Reagan acheived it, Clinton acheived it, Kennedy acheived it, and many other Presidents have acheived it.  This argument is completely baseless since history shows it is patently untrue.

3) So what if McCain had taken an aggressive stance on the economy from the beginning rather than running a traditional "tax cuts, national defense, and religious rights" campaign like he did?  Analysts were saying across the board that he left the door wide open and got flanked on this issue.

Even before ANY of the financial crisis events took place, circa Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers, McCain was shying away from the economy as an issue EVEN THOUGH voters ALREADY said it was their number one issue.  He cut his own legs out from under him based on the way he choose to run his campaign, since he had conceded the economy as an issue from the start hoping that he could focus on traditional Republican issues and win.  Your argument completely ignores this.

Really you just seem to be saying the same things over and over again and never even discuss anything McCain actually did in his campaign.

Just because he was a darling before does not mean the media wouldn't stop if they found a "better" darling, and they did.

McCain is a horrible speaker, that's where he went wrong. He sounds like a robot-like politician from the 1920s. Obama's saving grace was that he didn't actually say what he was going to do, he just used the word "change" a lot.. just like F.D. Roosevelt before him. It's smart politics is all.