Earlier today, I linked to an article in the Washington Post that talked about how a significant number of Republicans really like Rudy’s “electability.”  I have been pondering this for some time and am not so sure Rudy is as “electable” as many think. 

There is no doubt that Rudy looks ready to kick the butts of terrorists around the world which for many Republicans is the most important issue.  However, for a lot of social conservatives, his views on abortion and gun control are anathema.  I have personally spoken to numerous people in the Pro-life community and they left me with no doubt that they would not work for him at the grassroots level nor are many likely to vote for him either.  They may not vote Democrat, but even if they simply sit on their hands, this is a major cause for concern.  The Bush reelection campaign fine tuned their outreach to those in this community and worked with them to seriously drive out the vote.  There is NO way Ohio would have gone to Bush over Kerry without the evangelical and pro-life vote and their help on the phones and doing door to door.

I know that this component of the Republican coalition is not enough in and of itself to win, but not having it guarantees a loss.  It is possible that Rudy could bring in other volunteers, but my suspicion is that the “moderates” that he is most appealing to may vote for him, but they won’t hit the pavement or the phones.  Of course,  if Rudy puts a heavy Democrat state in play like New York, California, or even New Jersey, some of this calculus would change.  Unfortunately, I am not sure even he could switch those states, especially with Hillary as their nominee.  This means the Midwest and a few western states will probably again be pivotal and that means that whoever the GOP nominee is will have to rely very much on grassroots to drive out comparable numbers of our voters in 2008 as was done in 2004. 

This is especially true here in Ohio where the Republican brand took an absolute thrashing last year.  With Strickland in as Governor and using the power of patronage to get extra volunteers and dominate local political coverage, it’s going to be harder to keep that Bush infrastructure in place, especially since it will inevitably take awhile for divisions to heal after the primary.  Consequently, it looks like the GOP needs a base unifying candidate who can keep as much of the machine together as possible or Ohio is likely to turn blue (it did vote for Clinton #1 twice).

Right now, it looks like Fred Thompson has the best shot of accomplishing that.  I know that the party needs to look into the future and bring fresh blood into the coalition, but that will take time, time we don’t have before we elect the next President