John McCain: Maverick or Redneck? The Republicans are not quite sure.

By Pablo Fanque,
All This Is That National Affairs Editor


At a town hall meeting yesterday in Sparks, Nevada, Republican presidential candidate John McCain attempted to maintain the precarious equilibrium between the independence he boasts of and his purported conservatism. Was the audience buying it? Not so much.

"As many of you know, I've been called a maverick, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum," McCain said proudly before being assaulted with questions on offshore oil, taxes and stem cell research from a mostly Republican audience.

McCain swore he would not raise taxes if elected president and promised to appoint judges like Bush nominees Samuel Alito and John Roberts.

"Anything you can tax he wants to tax it more," McCain said of his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.

But McCain then told a disabled woman facing home foreclosure that he would step up enforcement of the Americans With Disabilities Act. He told a cancer survivor that he supported stem cell research, which pushed a local, Doug Englekirk, to tell McCain that he and other conservatives weren't happy to be supporting the Arizona senator. "There's a lot of us voting against Obama more than anything else," Englekirk said to McCain. "There are a lot of issues I've disagreed with you about, and I would like to know how do you assure me and other conservatives that you will hold to our values and give me something to be excited about?"
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