There are essentially two types of McCain voters:
1) The type described above by Feder, who have to delude themselves into thinking McCain is something he's not just to keep their sanity. These types will believe anything as long as it makes them feeeel better.
2) Those who recognize McCain for what he is (which is no conservative) but simply prefer him to the alternative (Hillary or Obama). These types (correctly) assert that moderate SCOTUS justices are preferable to ultra liberal ones, and that McCain is far more likely than his Donkey opponents to take the fight to our Islamic enemies. They also understand that GOP nominees being less-than-conservative is nothing new (Nixon, Ford, GHWB, Dole, and GWB....to name but a few), and that if they wait around for the next conservative Republican nominee they very well could be waiting for...ever.
And there are those of us who recognize that voting for an unmitigated mediocrity like McCain is to continue to enable an intellectually dishonest, highly dysfunctional, self-serving democrat-lite GOP. In short we've become desensitized to their crying wolf every four years using the "democrat-as-boogey-man" ploy. In fact, it would be refreshing if, for the first time in OVER TWENTY YEARS, they could give us a candidate we could actually vote for instead of effectively voting against his opponent.