How the Christian right could defeat Rudy -- and make Hillary president

Repeating the usual caveats about early polls, independent polling thus far seems to confirm that the Giuliani campaign's idea of which states it can put in play is inflated. The campaign asserts that California, New York and New Jersey would be swing states in a Clinton-Giuliani general election. A Rasmussen poll released Sept. 20 showed Clinton up 10 points over Giuliani in California, and a SurveyUSA poll released just more than a week later showed her up 20. (The difference can be partially attributed to the margin of error in each poll, and also to the fact that Rasmussen had both an "other" and a "not sure" category, while SurveyUSA had just "undecided.") In New York, a SurveyUSA poll released Oct. 1 showed Clinton up 24 points. In New Jersey, one of the blue states considered most at risk for a flip, a recent Rasmussen poll put Clinton at 51 percent and Giuliani at 40 percent, outside the margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

All this points up again just how important the evangelical vote has become to the GOP's margin of victory in recent years. More than that, however, evangelicals have been able to exert influence within the party because they form its single largest and most unified voting bloc, and have served as foot soldiers in the party's vaunted get-out-the-vote efforts. In a survey he conducted earlier this year, intended to provide a picture of the party, Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio found that of what he described as seven groups within the party, the group he called "moralists" was the largest, at 24 percent. "In 1997, there were five segments of the party, four of which were roughly in parity with each other in size," Fabrizio said in an interview. "In 2007, there are seven segments of the party, of which now the moralists are the single largest segment. While they haven't grown in size, they ... appear to be larger, because they speak, generally, with one voice on the issues that are important to them."

Early primary polls show a higher level of evangelical support for Giuliani than had once been expected -- though evangelicals tend to like the former mayor less than other Republican groups do -- but one of the many drawbacks to early polls is that they are largely reflective of name recognition, and "America's Mayor" has plenty. There's no way to tell just how much those evangelicals who express support for Giuliani know about him, his positions on social issues and his personal life.

What is certain, though, is that many prominent evangelical leaders express a profound distaste for the man and a resolute stance against his candidacy, no matter what the implications are for Republican electoral hopes.

Appearing on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" shortly after news of the first meeting to discuss the possibility of a third-party candidacy in the event of Giuliani's nomination, James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, stood up strongly against co-host Sean Hannity, who noted that a third-party conservative challenge could produce a Clinton presidency. Questioned about the impact a Clinton administration would have on the courts, compared with Giuliani's promises to appoint judges who would be acceptable to social conservatives, Dobson was dismissive. "It will be terrible, Sean," Dobson said of the possibility that Hillary Clinton could make appointments to the Supreme Court. "But you're taking Rudy's word on his intention to appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, and I would like to remind you that he has a terrible record in New York of appointing judges."

In an interview with Salon, Janet Folger, the president of Faith2Action, said she didn't support the idea of a third-party run, preferring former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who she believes will win the Republican nomination and the presidency. However, she warned that it's her belief that even without a third candidate in the mix the nomination of either Giuliani or Mitt Romney would guarantee Republican defeat in the general election. "Hillary et al. will have an activated, motivated base, while our people at most will go pull a lever, then go home and take a shower," Folger said. "They won't do the heavy lifting necessary, and everyone involved in politics knows that it's the pro-lifers who hammer in the signs and man the phone banks. We're the ones who are most highly motivated because we're the ones who want to stop the killing."

If evangelical leaders do make good on their promises, it could be disastrous for the Republican Party, possibly for years to come. Over the past decade, Fabrizio's survey showed, the party has become older and more conservative. This base and its demands have prevented the party from reaching out to demographic groups like Hispanics that are growing in numbers and importance, and many political observers believe the party is headed for a cliff. One of those is Dan Gurley, the Republican National Committee's field director during the 2004 election, who told Salon that though he remains a Republican the party can no longer automatically count on his vote. "People like Dobson ... have fundamentally changed the face of the Republican Party, and not for the better ... I think that's a fundamental flaw that this party has right now; they keep narrowing this focus of who they're appealing to, or at least they have in the past ... If the party doesn't embrace the kind of change that is out there in the way that our country's demographics are changing, the way the public's attitudes are changing on lots of things, they're going to relegate themselves to a permanent minority."

And of course, losing a significant potion of their base, as the party might in the case of a Giuliani nomination and an ensuing third-party run, would only accelerate that process. Such a fracture is one Richard Viguerie says has been long in coming. "The train has left the station in terms of social conservatives and I think probably the majority of economic conservatives, feeling that the relationship with the GOP will be different going forward. We've just been used and abused and lied to and betrayed enough ... We're like the biblical Jews, who couldn't get to the Promised Land until that leadership of the Jews of that time had passed from the scene. Conservatives are not going to get to the political Promised Land until we get new leadership ... [And] we're not going to wait for them to pass from the scene, we're gonna push them."

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