Larry Thompson

Cloistered away in a not-so-secret meeting during the Council for National Policy conference in Utah last month, a who’s who of right-wing leaders, led by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, emerged to issue a not-so-subtle message to the Republican Party:  if frontrunner Rudy Giuliani gets the nomination, we’re gone.  The threat alone was enough to prompt Giuliani to rethink his plans and suddenly decide to appear at this weekend’s “Values Voter Summit,” convened by Dobson’s allies at the Family Research Council.

With just over a year to go before the next presidential election, the Republican Party faithful are in some disarray, with wails of discontent over the field of primary contenders deemed insufficiently committed to advancing the “social conservative” agenda, or insufficiently willing to talk about their faith, or insufficiently likely to make it through the primaries.  While the campaigns of Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee have managed to pick off a few leaders and activists here and there, the only thing keeping the Right even somewhat unified at this point is Rudy Giuliani’s lack of anti-gay, anti-choice credentials and the threat of what his candidacy would mean for their influence within the party.  

The resolution drafted in Salt Lake City says that if “the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third-party candidate” – but who exactly is “the Republican Party”?  It’s not as if RNC strategists pick the nominee.  That’s up to the voters who participate in GOP primaries and caucuses.

So in essence, the Right is not so much threatening “the Republican Party” as it is Republican Party voters and trying to blackmail them by saying that if they think Giuliani, as his campaign likes to point out, is “the only Republican candidate that can beat” Hillary Clinton, they had better think again -- because he can’t do that if anywhere from a quarter to a half of their activists refuse to vote for him.