The Family Research Council has proposed an interesting theory as to why Republican primaries have thus far appeared fickle. FRC also maintains Rudy is toast:

The lesson that some are drawing from the results of the Republican presidential voting to date is that the race for the party's nomination is wide open. The deeper lesson is that the race for the GOP agenda is anything but wide open. The Republican caucus and primary contests to date prove incontrovertibly what we and others... have been saying all along....

The simple truth is that the conservative coalition - a three-legged stool - stands when social, economic and defense conservatives work together on an interlocking agenda. The coalition collapses when any of the legs is missing. [Dick] Armey and others, especially the early enthusiasts for Rudy Giuliani, suggested the social conservative leg of the stool is dispensable, or at least that it can be appreciably shortened without impact on the greater stability of the coalition. This thesis is not only false in theory, it now has been decisively shown not to represent what the conservative coalition actually believes. The three winners of the contests to date are each emblematic of one of the legs of the stool, and each is attempting to shore up his standing with the other two "legs":

... Mike Huckabee: Social leg
... John McCain: Defense leg
... Mitt Romney: Economic leg

In Michigan, these three individuals, now leading their party's nomination race, won more than 85% of the vote....

The remainder went to Ron Paul (who represents the small, doctrinaire libertarian portion of the coalition), Fred Thompson (who has all three legs but is struggling to interest voters in them when his manner suggests his own lack of passion for them), and Rudy Giuliani (now trailing badly because each leg of the coalition has a much better option than he is). Giuliani's crushing last-place finish in Michigan only underscores the larger point: the GOP coalition is looking for coherence on all three parts of the message and the base constituency of the party is fairly evenly split among those who hold each of these legs highest when forced to choose among them.

Somehow or other, if the conservative coalition is to re-form, these three legs need their favorites to unite around the strongest themes of each, to wit: 1) the surge worked, and it is no longer business-as-usual against radical Islamic terrorism - we will take the fight to them and win for our values (McCain); 2) the government is run with all the efficiency of a bar room brawl where the sailors are bad enough but it's actually the drunken captains doing the damage, and someone with business acumen has to clean it up (Romney); and 3) moral values are indispensable to a free nation that hopes to have and keep small government, and we can't get there without some Old-Time Religion, and those old-timers, our nation's almost uniformly Christian founders, knew it (Huckabee).

Obviously, each of the three leading Republicans can lay some claim to the other two themes that are not their primary ones.... There is probably nothing they could do that would be more unifying than to rally now around a platform that embodies the coalition in full.

The message: the GOP electorate is asking its leaders to reassemble the stool, plant it firmly in the cockpit of the party, and get the plane fast down the runway and off the ground. The message to Rudy? The tailwinds have passed you by, and the party you want to lead is moving on. The race is not wide open. A unified agenda beckons the GOP to a surge of its own.

posted on January 21, 2008 6:23 AM

Comments:

Jill,

You bring up a very important issue: keeping the coalition together. I've been talking about this for quite some time.

I'd like to offer a challenge. Consider that Ron Paul is not adequately described by the media nor the political pundits in the blogosphere and on talk radio. He is not a "doctinaire libertarian", though he does appeal to that small portion of the coalition and he does have the small "l" leanings that most Republicans do, especially those who make up the real economic conservative portion. In fact, he is a traditional Republican in the mold of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, & Robert Taft, (a strong defense, but non-interventionalism) with the added bonus that he is much more like Ronald Reagan on the Right to Life. BTW, Ron Paul was the first Republican in Congress to support Reagan in his 1976 run against an incumbent from his own party, Gerald Ford.

He introduced the FIRST Human Life Amendment to the Constitution in 1976. And more recently, has repeatedly introduced legislation that would define life as beginning at conception and turn Roe on its ear, as well as remove the Supreme Court's jurisdiction from interfering with states' right and duty to protect life. He is also the only candidate who has written a pro-life book, "A Challenge to Liberty", which champions the idea that "there cannot be liberty in a society unless the rights of all innocents are protected."

I believe that if more of us really examined why we went to war with Iraq, and read what Ron Paul has had to say about this, we could challenge the status quo. Republicans are right to be concerned with defense and national security. But many are conflicted on the war with Iraq. On the other hand, our politicians, especially McCain who is labeled to be the "defense" leg of this stool, have ignored the problem of our border security or worse: sold us out. This issue is of major concern to people who are concerned with defense.

Please read my endorsement of Ron Paul.
Life of the Party Endorses Ron Paul: A Man for All Seasons: http://lifeoftheparty.typepad.com/life_of_the_party/2008/01/life-of-the-par.html

Posted by: Michelle at January 21, 2008 3:33 PM

Republicans?
Who cares?

The Democrats are having the best fistfight EVER on CNN. I think Hillary can take Obama in the late rounds...

Posted by: FetusFascist at January 21, 2008 9:16 PM