McCain seemed like only one who could talk the middle class's language. After all, wasn't he the "maverick?" Didn't he always speak his mind, especially on matters of civil rights, social justice, and other things that ruffled the feathers of the party elite? And yet, he was certainly no "tax and spend" Liberal! Just a moderate Conservatlve. He even hated fundamentalist evangelicals, and had no truck with the "Culture War!" But then something happened in the 2000 elections that changed McCain. Honest John got beaten in the primaries by an upstart governor from Texas who used sleazy smear tactics and had no shame. He became the victim of smear tactics and innuendos. The lesson he took from that was: a conscience is an inconvenience to a man with high ambitions. And, in order to win the Oval Office, he had to play to the base of hls party. And so, in 2007, John McCain, the maverick who in 2004 opposed Bush's wartime tax cuts for the upper 1%, decided in 2007 that it just as "maverick-y"