Why McCain, Why?

To start, my wife and I seem to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum, at least thats the way it feels. Though she is a liberal and I consider my self conservative in truth we are both very moderate. It's really only little differences that divide us at times, and those differences only seem large for being the few points of contention between us. Still we lovingly call each other "the Republican" and "the Liberal" when talking politics (though we generally avoid the topic altogether).

When we found out McCain was running for president we both felt there was finally a moderate candidate, someone with a decent track record, and someone willing to turn away from his party's hardliners and reach across the isle. For once we found ourselves agreeing completely and even felt like we were making political decisions together, instead of using our one precious vote to negate the other's.

Then McCain started to change. In an effort to attract the hardcore conservatives, McCain aligned himself more and more with the far-right. Looking back this trend started a while ago, but really only became overly overt in the past year. Needless to say our support started to wane.

When McCain announced Palin as running mate I was curious. I thought having a female running mate might help temper McCain's sudden conservative streak, obviously I knew nothing about Palin at the time – now, several months later, the thought is just laughable (in a very sad way). To McCain's credit Palin does make him seem less conservative, but only relative to Palin herself, which really isn't helping.

So what now? Where is our moderate candidate now? Obviously my wife is now voting for Obama, who she views as the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately I have trouble voting for any "evils", so I'm not sure I can commit to either one.

I'm wondering how many moderates or even conservatives feel the same way? I also wonder which will hurt McCain more in the election; Obama's supporters, or lack of participation from alienated voters.

-Hank