I also think that Rudy Giuliani has something significant to offer (more likely as Attorney General than as president) That having been said, I cannot disagree with you more on the significance of social conservatism in the 2006 election. In our country, conservatives tend to be Republicans. If they ever turn toward libertarianism on social issues, it will be obvious and tragic. Ronald Reagan permanently changed the GOP from the party of Barry Goldwater/Gerald Ford sympathy for Roe vs. Wade and the resultant Holocaust of 50+ million innocent babies. Goldwater despised Reagan for that. Ford, representative of an even older and far more liberal and less respectable order in the GOP (Rockefellerism) than was Goldwater, despised Reagan in any event.
Contrary to numerous posts here, I remember very well the 1876 GOP convention at which Reagan partisans, shouting Viva! on one side of the hall and Ole! on the other prevented Ford from giving an acceptance speech until he invited Reagan to speak. Reagan urged every delegate to go home and support gubernatorial, senatorial Congressional and state legislative candidates, pointedly omitted any suggestion that they elect Ford, and urged them to have a great election. With Ford disposed of in that election that featured a faceoff between two feckless nonentities in Ford and Carter, the old order of the GOP passed into the dustbin of history and Reagan became president four years later.
Was he perfect??? No. No president is. None will ever be. He did redefine Republican politics. There is no going back to polo club social anarchy that produces dead babies by the tens of millions, turns a blind eye to radical attempts to redefine marrage to include same-sex sodomy as though it were actual sex, and despises the social issues values by which "red state" America lives. Reagan guaranteed that Catholics would be welcomed by the millions into the GOP, that evangelicals and pentecostals are welcome, that the GOP will do more than pay mere lip service to the 2nd Amendment.
Also contrary to several posts here, Reagan was in favor of legal abortion when he was the Republican governor of California. In fact, he signed California's permissive abortion statute into law. A year or two later, having viewed the results, he was going door-to-door, as governor, with a petition for an initiative to outlaw abortion. He later wrote a book against abortion published by Jim McFadden of Human Life Review.
It is waaaaaaay too early for many of us to choose a candidate in what seems to be a less than exciting field of potential GOP nominees. We are paying the price for failure to continue the education, training and activism that were the conservative movement pre-1980 (the New Right of YAF, CRs, YRs, and the Ashbrook-era ACU, among others). We did add the social conservative agenda to the mandatory canon of conservative views. Most pro-lifers are busy wit the issue and not with personal presidential ambitons or even with party control agendas.
I want a pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, anti-homosexuality (as to special rights or "marriage"), anti-taxation (particularly on Americans of modest means), modestly protectionist candidate. I may not get every one of those agendas with the nominee.
With Hillary or Barack Hussein Obama, I get none of those agendas. We will spend more money each year whether the GOP (military and warfare) or the Demons (establishing even more institutionalized socialist thievery at an ever escalating price) are elected. We are a long way from any realistic chance of cutting the welfare state. No one elected will be able to close borders and coasts.
The one agenda that can be accomplished within the next presidency (especially with a restored GOP Senatorial majority, is the re-establishment of the long-absent "rule of law" by appointments of SCOTUS justices "like Roberts, Alito and Scalia." Only Nixon could "go to Red China" (not that he should have). No Demonrat would have dared. Only Nixon could impose wage and price controls (not that he should have). No Demonrat would have dared. Only Slick Willie could sign welfare reform into law (we are glad he did). No Republican would have dared.
I personally believe that Nixon's appointment of Blackmun, and Ford's appointment of Stevens and Bush the Elder's appointment of Souter were all conscious appointments of pro-aborts to save Roe vs. Wade. Bush the Elder balanced Souter with Thomas. Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor because of a memorandum of lies submitted by Kenneth Starr (then Solicitor General) and instgatd by James Baker claiming that O'Connor was pro-life when she was the precise opposite from her days n the Arizona State Senate. She is and always has been a Unitarian Universalist and not a Catholic as many wrongly suppose because of her name. Reagan tried to appoint Bork but was thwarted. Bork was for state's rights at the time but very shortly thereafter became a pro-lifer when, as a widower, he married a conservative ex-nun. Reagan appointed Anthony Kennedy who had a very pro-life track record when appointed and apparently was converted to the dark side by Lawrence Tribe in about 1990. Reagan appointed Scalia, the best nominee in at least half a century. Reagan named Rehnquist (an original Roe vs. Wade dissenter) as Chief Justice. Dubya gave us two outsanding justices in Roberts and Alito, who seem trustworthy but have had little opportunity to rule.
We desperately need to hold onto the White House against Hillary or any other Demonrat nominatable. If we get one more SCOTUS justice, we overturn Roe vs. Wade. If we get two more (replacing Stevens and the ever unhealthy Ginsburg), we can probably make that overturn permanent.
Such a SCOTUS may finally give operative constitutional enforcement to the RTKBA. And to property rights (overturning Kelo vs. New London). Protection of marriage (in many pending cases). An end to affirmative action outrages. Name your constitutional cause (within reasonable reach).
If, as one can prove with reasonable ease, Rudy stopped being a pro-lifer as an opportunist convinced that NYC (not normal America) would not elect him as a pro-lifer, what makes him any less flexible as a national candidate in the GOP. Make him promise strict constitutionalists as nominees for ALL federal courts. Make him define strict construction so as to make it clear that the constitution does not allow much less require Roe vs. Wade. Make him state that homosexual "marriage", bestiality, twelvesomes or interspecies sex are not constitutionally required and that his judges will not make believe that any of them are.
Whatever the polls look like today, Rudy probably will not be nominated. McCain may or may not be nominated. Romney may or may not be nominated. You can bet your bottom dollar that Tancredo won't be nominated (no matter how hard his partisans hope). I would probably vote for Sam Brownback. I could easily vote for Duncan Hunter if Brownback is out but I don't see Hunter being nominated. Newt Gingrich might be nominated if he ran but it is by no means certain that he will run or that he will be nominated if he does run.
The social issues (particularly guns,abortion and marriage) and the military/war on terror issues are the defining issues which separate Republicans from Demonrats today and for the foreseeable future.
If you say that social conservatives are "extremists," then you are saying that you are not a social conservative. If it is "extremist" to think that 50+ million innocent babies dead of surgical abortion alone over three decades, then I gladly plead guilty.
Wow... great post!
Do you think there could be a Contract with America for the presidential contenders? I think that might help unify the absolutely needed conservative base.
I remember very well the 1876 GOP convention
You write with such clairity for someone of your age ;)
You voted for NY Gov. Tilden in that election, didn't ya ? ;-)