Conservatives in question

If this year’s exciting and very much still up-in-the-air campaign has proven anything, it’s… If this year’s exciting and very much still up-in-the-air campaign has proven anything, it’s that journalists, pollsters and political junkies alike have no clue about the psychology of the American voter. There’s no better example of this than the Republican primary.

If you thought, as I did, that this Republican primary was going to be about a battle between the economic and socially conservative wings of the Republican Party – represented by the Tax Slayer and erstwhile Protective Daddy of New York, Rudy Giuliani, and the Dark (OK, Unfamiliar) Horse who lost a bunch of weight and denies evolution, Mike Huckabee, respectively – then you were wrong.

Remember when Giuliani seemed like the inevitable nominee? Oh, how the tides have turned. He’s currently camped out in Florida, campaigning in a last-ditch effort to save his candidacy. Someone get the man a Thermos because the political climate’s looking chilly.

On the other hand, Mike Huckabee’s candidacy appears to have deflated a bit from his win in the Iowa caucus, and his chances of winning the nomination are slim. The failing candidacies of Giuliani and Huckabee are probably in the best interest of the Republicans. If a cross-dressing, pro-choice Giuliani were the nominee, the socially conservative half of the Republican voters would probably stay home. The converse is true if the nominee was Mike Huckabee, whose FairTax proposal (to replace the income tax with a national sales tax of about 23 percent) is considered crazy even by the most conservative economic standards.

So, in the months leading up to the primary, the conservative establishment was searching for a savior, someone who would ride into town wafting of a musky aftershave to fulfill all their Reaganesque fantasies and keep the presidency in the rightful hands of the Republican Party. And the Chosen One turned out to be