I'm not sure either half of that is true. Maybe you have me confused with someone else?
I mean, I would call myself a moderate Republican. Or maybe a moderate conservative. But I've never claimed to be independent. Though I might as well be - I voted Democratic in the last Presidential election and the last 4 times I voted for senators.
I do see where you're coming from. It seems to be a common M.O. around here. It used to be MikeT and tec, now it's all3 and GuitarGuy claiming to be moderate independents and yet appearing to be nothing close to that. I don't know how much of that is just that people want to identify as independent for personal identity reasons (they want to see themselves as independent thinkers) and how much people maybe were moderate when they were younger, then as they grow older they fairly typically drift right and the window drifts left until they wind up way off center.