Since before I certainly can remember, the political train of thought during and after Presidential primaries has always been that candidates tend to run to the base of their party during the primary, and then once winning the nomination will begin leaning toward the moderates in order to run stronger in the General Election.  In fact, I can't think of a recent election where this wasn't the case.

However, with John McCain we seem to be seeing just the opposite.  He has seemingly won the nomination (of course nothing is final yet) without the conservative base, and some are now saying he will have no shot in the general election unless he begins leaning right again and appealing to the base he has done so well without. 

How did such a thing happen, when in the many years past, things have always been the exact opposite?

Well, if you turn on FoxNews, you will see Sean Hannity and many others saying the "Conservative Vote" is split between Romney and Huckabee, and that the Moderates took advantage.  Well, that is a bit too simple of an explanation for me.  I don't believe Romney would have necessarily won a majority of Huckabee's voters and here's why:

The "Conservative Vote" is not just a one-size-fits-all voting bloc.  You have to dig deeper than that.  My argument is that the bloc is split three distinct ways: McCain has the Defense Conservatives, Huckabee the Social Conservatives and Romney the Fiscal Conservatives.  And a SoCon's second choice isn't necessarily a FiCon, so Romney would not necessarily be their second choice. 

Now, how did McCain win then?  Are the DefCon's that much greater in number than the others?  Not so; in fact SoCons and FiCons are probably the largest groups of the three, but this is where Moderates come into play.  McCain's grasp of his bloc of DefCon's plus the large group of Moderates and Hispanic voters combined, are the reason he has done so well to this day.

So, in the end, John McCain should do the opposite of what all other nominees have done before him.  Instead of shifting more towards the center, he needs to make a shift back towards the FiCon's and SoCon's in our party - he is already moderate enough.