Dead party walking

Of course, some Republicans are more zombified than others. McCain opposed Bush's tax cuts, voted for campaign finance reform, and is more pro-environment than other Republicans. Huckabee is playing the populist card and has criticized Bush's handling of the "war on terror." But those are minor differences, more of style than of substance. McCain is now campaigning as a born-again supply-sider, demanding that the corporate tax rate be cut and calling for Bush's tax cuts to be made permanent. Huckabee's economic policies are arguably even more right-wing than Bush's. And his criticism of Bush's conduct of the "war on terror" is extremely tepid: "The Bush administration has never ... convinced us of [Islamic terrorists'] ruthless fanaticism" isn't exactly a Ron Paul stump speech. And with Romney and Giuliani, there aren't even differences of style, except that both of them are running to Bush's right on foreign policy. Romney called for doubling the size of Guantánamo, and Giuliani virtually declared war on Iran.

The fact that the GOP candidates all hold similar positions but that none has become the establishment choice is highly unusual for Republicans, who normally close ranks early behind a candidate. This has magnified the always-existing fissures in the Republican Party, setting evangelicals against small-government libertarians against hawks and preventing any candidate from taking control of the race.

If any Democratic readers need to be cheered up, they should go to the right-wing Web site Townhall.com and read Dick Morris and Eileen McGann's column, then the reader responses. Morris and McGann assert that Michigan plunged the GOP race into "total chaos." "The scatter-shot outcome reflects deeper divisions among the GOP's three wings: Economic conservatives are moving to Romney; social righties rallying 'round Huckabee -- and the national-security types who started for Rudy have migrated to McCain in the voting so far," Morris and McGann write. "The various factions are growing ever more alienated from each other, demanding a level of purity from their candidates that makes consensus and unity less and less possible ... This is no way to select a nominee who can win."

The Townhall readers don't buy it. They make lots of legitimate points about the diversity of the party and the need to take politics out of the hands of the kingmakers and pundits. And then they inadvertently illustrate the authors' thesis, loudly arguing that Romney, or Huckabee, or Giuliani, or Ron Paul, represents true conservatism. (Few stick up for McCain.)

But it's much too early for Democrats to start gloating about the meltdown of the GOP. The iron discipline that prevented any deviation from the Bush line in Congress may have an equivalent among Republican voters. Whether out of pragmatism or us-vs.-them solidarity, once a nominee is chosen, no matter how bruising the process, rank-and-file Republicans will probably support him -- even if it's McCain. Evangelical Christians, in particular, are more pragmatic than they are often taken to be; if McCain emerges as the GOP candidate, most are likely to swing behind him.

But aside from the twice-divorced, socially liberal Giuliani (whose decline has greatly benefited McCain), the Arizona senator is still the hardest candidate for die-hard Republicans to swallow. Part of the right-wing worldview is a sense of injured grievance, a feeling that "they" (liberals, do-gooder elites, p.c. academics, feminists, race-card-playing minorities, nanny-state-worshipping hypocrites) are locked in a war to the death against "us." Once the world is defined in this way, it's extremely hard to accept shades of gray. McCain, for various reasons (calling Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance" didn't help) is regarded by many orthodox conservatives as a black ant among red ants. It doesn't matter what he does -- his bitterest enemies will never accept him.

The irony, of course, is that the very things that make McCain anathema to some of the party faithful give him the best chance of beating whomever the Democrats nominate. For the race will not be decided by the GOP's base: It will be decided by independents, moderate Republicans and crossover Dems. And McCain runs strong with these groups. Perhaps even more than his policies, his reputation as a maverick has allowed him to differentiate himself from Bush and his policies in a way no other GOP candidate has. Considering that McCain crawled back into the bosom of the GOP four years ago and supported Rumsfeld's management of the war, it's remarkable that McCain can still sell himself as an outsider.

Indeed, McCain's last-honest-man image appears to be partly responsible for one of the more intriguing revelations to emerge from the primaries: In New Hampshire and Michigan, McCain was supported by more GOP voters who disapproved of the war than any other candidate -- including Ron Paul. This despite McCain's declaration that he wouldn't be concerned if the United States were still in Iraq in 10,000 years.

Next page: Will the GOP be able to redefine itself?