Well, when I placed my initial bet on McCain back in 2007, I was betting that he would simply be the "comfort choice" for Reps.  Betting on the guy whose "turn" has come is a pretty good bet when looking at GOP politics.  That's what he wound up being.  The Republican base doesn't like him much, but at least they know him well enough to make an educated guess about what they'd be getting from him, and I think there was probably an electability consideration, too, given McCain's historically pretty solid polling among Indies.

The problem for McCain is that Obama was the Dem who polled well among Indies, for different reasons.  McCain has been portrayed as a maverick for years by the press, while Obama's appeal is more cultural -- sort of the flipside of Obama doing poorly with rural whites on cultural grounds.  I keep saying that, for all the laughable charges of "black nationalism" and the like, Obama is clearly the candidate of Yuppiedom.  (They shop at Whole Foods; he uses an iPhone; Michelle tells farmers in Iowa about getting her shoes from the clearance rack at Ross, etc -- almost stereotypically yuppie.)  And a huge chunk of Indies are suburban/exurban yuppies.  The McCains can't connect that way.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin