I realize this is about the hundred and twentieth time this question has been posed, but every time people start really trying to answer the question, they are surprised by the amount of support Rudy is actually getting from the conservative base.

Tom Bevan of RCP talked about this yesterday when he wrote about the Powell and Cizilla article. The Cizilla article didn't cover much new ground and held to the conventional wisdom about Giuliani being unelectable in the primary. And despite all that, whenever I've talked to a conservative, Giuliani is much more acceptable than McCain.

Romney took a little trip to the Heritage Foundation retreat, where he needs to drum up some support from the only quarter where he has a chance to make a dent: Conservatives.

Here's the Romney pitch:

Romney said his tenure as governor taught him important lesson about social conservatism. "On the issue of life, this fiscal conservative became a social conservative," he said.

He railed against government spending and said he wouldn't be afraid to take on ideas traditionally dominated by Democrats -- education, the environment and healthcare.

Romney has two problems. One is that Romney doesn't help electorally. The GOP is not going to be competitive in New England or New York, with or without Romney. But with Giuliani it's a whole different ball game. Giuliani could flip New York, and he will make New Jersey competitive. If he succeeds at that, then its game over. GOP win in 2008.

From the NYT today, it appears that Romney and Giuliani have decided on different strategies to deal with the wide gulf on social issues.

Romney, who has been inconveniently caught on tape supporting abortion, is apparently now a full-fledged social conservative:

Mr. Romney made no mention of his past support of abortion rights and gay rights, instead presenting himself as someone who fought efforts in Massachusetts to permit gay marriage, unrestricted abortion and stem cell research.

"I stood at the center of the battlefield on every major social issue," he said. "I fought to preserve our traditional values, and to protect the sanctity of human life. I vetoed bills. I filed new bills. I enforced a law that banned out-of-state same-sex couples from coming to Massachusetts to get married."

The strategy is apparently to have Romney appear as a Giuliani alternate, but one that is more acceptable to social conservatives. It's not going to work. As much as social conservatives would like a pro-life candidate, they would also like an electable one. And as much as Romneys newfound positions help him with the GOP, they hurt his electable by making him seem like a (forgive me) John Kerry opportunist. Not good.

Giuliani's strategy is much, much better:

In the midst of this general story on the action in the Senate to revive the immigration bill, one quote from Senator Trent Lott has garnered a considerable amount of attention in the conservative blogosphere:

Comments by Republican senators on Thursday suggested that they were feeling the heat from conservative critics of the bill, who object to provisions offering legal status. The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: "Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem."

At some point, Mr. Lott said, Senate Republican leaders may try to rein in "younger guys who are huffing and puffing against the bill."

Whoa.

I can see why folks are mad about this. It has everything: a consistent sneer at talk radio, an establishment-minded, consistent disdain for the opinions of the common folks and underlined with an expectation that decisions should not be made by "younger guys."

Well, it's happened. 24 Republicans crossed over and joined 39 Democrats and Joe Lieberman and voted for cloture. Now the immigration bill heads for an up-down Senate vote and only needs 51 to pass. Among those crossing were Norm Coleman (R-MN), Kit Bond (R-MO) and John Ensign (R-NV).

The fight is not over, but the support of conservatives for those 24 senators and President Bush is:

"It's clear there's a large number of the House Republicans who have serious concerns with the Senate bill," said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader.

Several of the Republican amendments slated for upcoming Senate votes would make the bill tougher on unlawful immigrants, while those by Democrats would make it easier on those seeking to immigrate legally based solely on family ties.

Particularly worrisome to supporters, including the Bush administration, is a bipartisan amendment by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., that would change the bill's new program for weeding out illegal employees from U.S. workplaces.

Politics, it's said, makes for strange bedfellows and it's been no truer than today. I find myself on the same side as Sens. Barack Obama and Max Baucus (although for different reasons). This is a pretty smart play by Obama for the record.

You know how President Bush smacked us -- his biggest supporters -- for not falling in line with his amnesty bill? Well, he is kinda shocked, shocked I tell you, that we didn't follow him in selling out the national security of our country:

President Bush did not intend to single out his conservative supporters for criticism in a speech on immigration reform last week and was "surprised" that his remarks angered Republicans, Jon Ward and Ralph Z. Hallow will report Thursday in The Washington Times.

"He was surprised by the reaction," White House spokesman Tony Snow said of Mr. Bush's speech in Glynco, Ga., last week. "The speech in Georgia was, 'We've got a serious problem and we need to fix it.' It was not in any way designed to be pointed at Republicans."

Uh Tony, it was sure as hell pointed at Republicans. The spin ain't working here, buddy. The president called us out and questioned our motives, the very same people who've stuck with him for the last term and a half.

That's apparently what "The Economist" wants their readers to believe in a new article, Under the weather. Or rather that is until you get to near the end of the article, by which time The Economist hopes that people have stopped reading. I have to thank Jim Geraghty of NRO's The Campaign Spot for directing me to finish this piece, otherwise I would have given up on reading it after a few paragraphs.

The Economist is a British political and economic publication, ensconced firmly in the world-wide left. Their latest issue focuses on the question "Is America Turning Left?" They certainly hope so, and the overwhelming part of the article regurgitates facts and figures from the American mainstream media and polling firms such as Pew and Stan Greenberg's The Democracy Corps to support that position.

The author obviously views the "mistake" of the Iraq war and the failure of the Bush presidency as established, final facts. In that sense, the article is no different than a press release from the Democratic National Committee. But in the final few paragraphs, the article includes a few polling results that should scare the Democrats and the Left mightily, even more so since they come from Stan Greenberg (Clinton's pollster) himself:

The Democrats' good fortune is much more the result of a Republican collapse than a Democratic revival. The March Pew poll shows that the proportion of people who express a positive view of the Democratic Party has actually declined by six points since January 2001. It's just that the proportion of people who express a positive view of the Republican Party has declined by 15 points. The Democratic-controlled Congress is even more unpopular than the Bush White House, with the lowest approval rating in 35 years.

Americans remain sceptical about the Democrats' favourite tool for improving the world-government action. A Democracy Corps poll found that Americans believe by a majority of 57% to 29% that government makes it harder for people to get ahead in life. The same poll found that 83% of people believe that, if the government had more money, it would probably waste it, the highest level of anti-government sentiment in a decade. America is not entering into a new era of liberal activism.

The American public is still receptive to the conservative message. It's just that they will not tolerate it coming from a source perceived, in many cases correctly, as corrupt (aka the Republican Congress of 2006). Nor should they. If the Republicans ever get their act together, I believe that the Democrats' majority status in Congress will be very short lived.

Rush Limbaugh has spoken and he will continue to speak. He isn't excited about the pack that is running for the Republican nomination. McCain has done the best he could in offering his soul to the religious and conservative right. As for Giuliani, one would have to perform the Heimlich maneuver to save a conservative from choking while voting for Rudy.

As far as Rush goes, he is confessing to his listeners that he can't lie about this pack of lemmings --- oops I mean lemons, who are fighting for the nomination.

What does all this mean? The conservatives would like Jeb Bush to carry on the monarchy. They will yell and shout to convince him to save the crown. If that fails, the Professor, Newt Gingrich will step in and try to lead the party, once again, to total control.

I don't know what to think. On the one hand, Bush AG appointee Michael Mukasey seems to be a stand up guy with a great resume and a solid career in civil service. On the other hand, Charles Schumer likes him. Phil reported earlier that there isn't likely to be much resistance to Mukasey, but conservatives still aren't sure whether they like this or not. On the anti- side we have Calabresi at Time:

But in dropping Olson and going with Mukasey, Bush has opened himself up to attack from the right. Conservatives are worried about Mukasey's 1994 denial of asylum for a Chinese man who said his wife had been forced to have an abortion under that country's one-child law, which they say indicates he's weak on pro-life issues. And though he has consistently ruled with the Administration on a number of important and high-profile terrorism cases, Mukasey broke with them in an early, crucial ruling, saying that American citizen Jose Padilla had a right to a lawyer, no matter what his status in the war on terror. Mukasey is also very close to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom social conservatives distrust.

On the pro- side we have Peter Wehrner at the Corner:

I certainly have not been the biggest advocate of Gov. Mitt Romney's prospects as a presidential candidate. However, as of today, Romney is the only conservative candidate I would be comfortable with. While big Republican names like Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are also being touted, they are Republicans, not conservatives -- at least not conservative enough. And, yes, there is a difference between being a Republican and being a conservative.

Mitt Romney is making a strong appeal towards the base of the Republican Party, because he knows that in order for a Republican to win, you've got to appeal to the conservative base. Anyone who listens to Rush Limbaugh will tell you the same thing: Republicans win when they are truly conservative, not some kind of watered down moderate.

Mitt Romney has declared "I'm a conservative Republican, there's no question about that....I'm at a different place than the other two." He's absolutely right, looking at the current crop of presidential hopefuls on the Republican side, particularly McCain and Giuliani.

Although he has yet to file as a candidate, Rudy Giuliani consistently ranks at the top of every poll measuring the appeal of potential Republican presidential candidates. That has caused some consternation on the Right, as Giuliani is quite liberal in his social views.

But aside from Sam Brownback, there is not a social conservative among the suspected Republican primary candidates that would fully satisfy Focus on the Family. And there's a lot more for conservatives, like myself, to worry about in 2008 other than if the new president is going to be a pro-life activist. Like electability.

For what it's worth, I think that Giuliani would be neutral on social issues from the White House, other than supporting conservative choices for the Supreme Court. In that case, any conservative judge worth appointing to the highest court in the land is probably going to be pro-life anyway. But it's probably a given that Giuliani won't be crafting any anti-abortion legislation with Mitch McConnell anytime soon.

Everybody likes the guy, except maybe his former wife Donna Hanover. General consensus in my poorly done surveys indicates that everybody wants to vote for Rudy but nobody believes that the conservative right will vote for him. I am beginning to believe that Giuliani still is protected by his stellar service after the 9/11 attack.

In reality, the majority in this country just want a guy who can run this country. One indication that Senator McCain is in trouble is a recent poll of New Hampshire voters. McCain is ahead of Giuliani 28% to 27%. The problem for McCain is that he carries the moderates in this poll 41% to 22%. The surprise to me is that the conservative voters pick Giuliani 31% to 20%. Giuliani is telling the conservative block that we must stick to the Republican core values (whatever they are). Rudy is gathering support despite the fact that he has been married three times and his second marriage ended while he was Mayor. There are no secrets in Rudy's closet. The closet door has been open for inspection for a long time.

I posted an extensive list of candidates that I thought would run for President. The list was long. I failed to include James S. Gilmore, the former Republican Governor of Virginia. He is a no-nonsense conservative. After being elected in 1997, he eliminated the tax on automobiles. He seems like a true conservative who speaks his mind. It is that habit that may make it tough for him to get the nomination.

Yesterday, he announced that he is officially in the race. Prior to 9/11, he served on the National Commission on Terrorism until 2003, and stated that the country was not prepared for an attack. He had poor relations with some of the Bush advisors and then seemed to disappear from the political map.

After George Allen lost his bid for Senator--and therefore his hope for the Presidency--and Mark Warner decided there is more to life than running for President, Gilmore believes that somebody from Virginia should be running for President. If nothing else, he will certainly add to the debates.

Let's be clear, it's not just a bunch of flag-burning liberals who are calling for Alberto Gonzales's head on a platter. Last week, Newt Gingrich started singing that tune, and today we are learning of a veritable chorus of conservatives joining in. I give you the American Freedom Agenda. No, they're not a boy band climbing the pop charts, rather a silver-haired bunch of right-leaning guys who stay awake at night worrying about things like the separation of powers, the Military Commissions Act, and habeas corpus.

So what do the AFA want? For Bush to fire Gonzales. And when do they want it? Now. In a letter to the president, the group had this to say about our current Attorney General:

"Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances. He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm."

Another outspoken critic of Gonzales, Daniel J. Metcalf, worked for the DOJ for over 30 years before retiring, in part, because of the politicization of the justice department. He sums up the A.G.'s performance this way:

"Yes, it became quite clear that under Gonzales, the department placed no more than secondary value on the standards that I and my office had valued so heavily for the preceding 25 years--accuracy, integrity, responsibility and quality decision-making being chief among them."

Way back before Michael Brown and Harriet Miers made headlines, one might recall the President's promise to restore honesty and integrity to the Executive Branch. Indeed, it is a distant memory at this point. Thank goodness, anyway, that some conservatives haven't forgotten a few of the priciples America should still stand for.

The following comes from conservative columnist Frank Schaeffer who until very recently was a staunch Republican, Bush/Cheney defender. In fact, you might say he was the very definition of a right wing Republican. No more, and he's not the only one. Seek and ye shall find. Here's what he said in his column

I'm a Christian, a writer, a military parent and a registered Republican. On all those counts, I was disgusted by an e-mail I just received that's being circulated by campaign supporters of Republican George Allen, who's trying to retain his Senate seat in Virginia. The message goes like this: "First, it was the Catholic priests, then it was Mark Foley, and now Jim Webb, whose sleazy novels discuss sex between very young teenagers. ... Hmmm, sounds like a perverted pedophile to me! Pass the word that we do not need any more pedophiles in office." Democrat James Webb is a war hero and former Marine, wounded in Vietnam and winner of the Navy Cross. He was writing about class and military issues long before me and has articulated the issue of how the elites have dropped the ball on military service in his classic novel Fields of Fire. By the way, that's a book Tom Wolfe calls "the greatest of the Vietnam novels."