I see Republicans as being basically three different types. There are Libertarians that don't want to throw away their vote, so vote Republican for fiscal reasons. These are people that percieve Republicans to want limited government. They are sort of fiscally conservative, but not so much socially. I think that is a big group, growing all the time. Maybe after a while, this group will actually be able to vote Libertarian. Then there are people that are socially conservative, but maybe not so much fiscally. Those are the ones that vote for right to life, gay marriage bans, etc. Bush is probably of this type, both father and son. Then there are the ones that are really pretty moderate, centerists as you say. They are not really all that conservative. McCain seems to be this way to me.

Democrats seem to have more different "flavors". There are the college kids and idealists. They seem to vote strictly by emotion. Make a movie like "the China Syndrome" and you have a decade of "no nukes" types. (Then two decades later they'll change their mind) One step up from that, and you have the ones that want socialized medicine, increased assistance programs and stuff like that. They're sort of idealists too, but they tend to think through the problems and look for solutions a little more. Of course, they haven't thought it through far enough to see how truly socialized medicine works, how it provides mediocre care, things like giving nitro pills to elderly with bad hearts and lets them die because it cannot afford angioplasty and bypass surgery. Then you have the union workers and those types. They seem to me to be the closest to the WWII-era Democrats, in that they just want representation for the middle class. Then there are the plethora of single position Dems, the trial lawyers that resist tort reform, the right to choose people, the minorities, etc.

I don't particularly like any of these except the Libertarian approach. I wish that party would reach critical mass. But in the meantime, I'm voting McCain/Palin. Obama scares me, he's so liberal I'm afraid of an economic crash and I think he is unlikely to provide a good influence in our energy policy.