An interesting read.

The AP has this report.

Excellent post by Reflections of a Paralytic.

Courtesy of the Washington Times:

Some national Republican Party officials worry that their party is moving away from its conservative stands on social and religious issues in preparation for the 2008 elections.

“Evangelical and pro-life Catholics are a critical part of the GOP’s electoral coalition,” said James Bopp Jr., an Indiana member of the Republican National Committee, which Saturday concluded its four-day annual summer meeting here.

“The GOP cannot win in 2008 without their enthusiastic support,” Mr. Bopp said. “It remains to be seen whether the GOP is moving away from them. Whether the GOP is doing so will be determined by who is nominated for president.”

 . . . .

Some Republicans wonder what will happen to the party’s electoral coalition if Rudolph W. Giuliani is the nominee. The former New York mayor has been ambivalent about the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade and calls the decision to have an abortion “deeply personal.”

“Nominating Giuliani would seriously jeopardize the support of evangelicals and pro-life Catholics and would trigger a fight within the GOP on the pro-life plank and other matters related to social issues that would cripple the party,” Mr. Bopp said.

So saith Michelle Cottle of the New Republic:

What exactly is going on here? Sure, Mitt Romney’s Latter Day Sainthood is creeping out some of the base and so makes for an irresistible target. But what of the heavy breathing over Thompson’s Jesus credentials or, weirder still, Brownback’s–a man so ostentatiously devout I feel the urge to genuflect every time I see him on C-SPAN. The answer to this puzzle lies in who most notably is not getting tarred in this religious war: Rudy Giuliani. I mean, if Thompson’s degree of protestant zeal is of concern to a single soul, one might reasonably expect the serially unfaithful, thrice-wed, pro-gay, proudly pro-choice New Yorker–quite possibly the shabbiest Catholic in the history of the modern church–to be burned in effigy daily by the party’s wingnuts.

But for now, it seems the ideologically heretical Giuliani is regarded as an entirely different animal, and so the rest of the pack is busy jockeying to be the base-friendly non-Rudy in this race. I mean, why bother picking on Giuliani’s spiritual shortcomings when America’s Mayor is already taking a beating for the full range of his noxiously liberal views on conservative websites like Redstate.com and RightWingNews.com? Best to set yourself up as the conservative alternative and hope that eventually Rudy goes the way of the once formidable, now barely conscious McCain campaign.