If you examine the picture closely, you’ll see that abortion and closely related issues are indeed the key division with in the Republican Party. This may not be YOUR key issue — I didn’t say it was everybody’s — but it is most certainly the key dividing line. If you look at FR threads regarding potential Presidential candidates, they are always heavy on posts like “He’s pro-abort and I’ll never vote for a pro-abort”. This is a VERY frequent comment when Condi Rice’s name comes up, despite her ample conservative credentials. That the first black President could also be the first female President AND support the real Second Amendment is a breathtaking possibility, with major implications for the future political landscape in the US — devastating the general perception in the electorate that the Democratic Party is the party that’s “for” women and blacks, shifting many blacks and women into the RKBA camp who’d never before had any reason to seriously consider making that shift, and greatly weakening the the popular Democratic/Socialist refrain that US blacks are disproportionately poor and crime-prone because they were “oppressed” (hard to prevent black people who’ve bought into that from considering that if Condi was oppressed — which she clearly was — and didn’t let it hold her back, they can too). But a huge percentage of FReepers don’t give a crap about any of that, because she’s “a pro-abort” and they don’t need to know anything else about her to know they’d never vote for her. The colossal amount of time and energy our elected representatives are spending yakking about abortion, morming after pills, embryonic stem cell research, and of course the other pet issue of the same camp of the Republican Party, gay marriage, is all a very convenient distraction, which enables the socialists — both Democrat and Republican — to keep on piling up new government spending and wealth redistribution schemes without any noisy opposition. Most of the potential noisemakers are too busy putting on a show for their constituents of trying to get full citizenship rights for zygotes, and of trying to prevent Jim and Joe from ever getting a marriage license, to bother much with the details of the ever-growing tax-spend-redistribute monster.
There are indeed many Freepers, and conservatives in general, who will not deviate from that litmus test and I understand their reasoning. But the pro-abortion candidates who are running for President on the Republican side have much more liberal baggage than just that. Do you see anyone in the field that will at least try to make significant cuts in the size of government?