Controversy of the Week

It was “the most critical three-day period in the Republican presidential race so far,” said Byron York in National Review Online, but when it was over, the GOP still didn’t have a clear front-runner. Last weekend, the party’s top five prospects got the chance to emerge from the pack at two critical forums—the Family Research Center’s Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C., and the Fox News debate in Orlando. Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee each made an impassioned case for the support of their party’s conservative base. But after all the “wooing” and posturing, said Linda Feldmann in The Christian Science Monitor, the base “appeared no more in agreement on whom to support than they did going in.”

That was bad news for Giuliani, said Peter Wallsten in the Los Angeles Times. He’s been leading in national polls and had hoped to allay the social conservatives’ worries about his three marriages, pro-choice views, and gay-friendly history as New York City’s mayor. But though he promised that conservative Christians would find much to like in his administration, his next-to-last-place finish in the Values Voters straw poll made it “clear that he remained a distrusted figure.” And without the support of social conservatives, his path to the nomination will be very steep. Giuliani’s chief rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, also could not complete the sale to the Christian group, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. Though he technically won its straw poll, many evangelicals made it clear that they continued to take a dim view of Romney’s Mormon faith. Their bigotry leaves Romney in a no-win situation. To win the religious right’s support, he “has to say that religion matters a great deal—and also that it doesn’t.” How does he manage that?

He can’t, said Dean Barnett in The Weekly Standard, which is why it’s time to consider a dark-horse candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. A likable Baptist preacher who is a terrifically entertaining speaker, Huckabee electrified the Values Voter crowd with a speech rich in Biblical allusions and came within half a point of winning the straw poll. In Iowa, whose critical January caucuses are less than 10 weeks away, polls now show Huckabee rising into the top tier of candidates, with a five-point lead over Giuliani. It makes sense: On such hot-button social issues as abortion and gay marriage, Huckabee is a “rock-ribbed” conservative. Why, the man “doesn’t even believe in evolution.” Better still, said David Brooks in The New York Times, he’s sympathetic to the needs of “the white working class, the backbone of the GOP.” To top it off, he’s funny, charismatic, and “has no history of flip-flopping in order to be electable.”

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That kind of “authenticity” may be crucial in the weeks ahead, said Noam Scheiber in The New Republic Online. Up to now, the Republican race has consisted mainly of the leading candidates desperately trying to prove their “ideological purity.” Conservative voters seem to be tiring of this charade, which is why the race remains a muddled mess. The real problem, said Gloria Borger in U.S. News & World Report, is that Republicans no longer know what they stand for. Is it banning abortion? Tax cuts? Small government? Those were the issues of the 1980s, and after years in power, Republicans seem fresh out of compelling new ideas. That leaves their presidential candidates fighting over which one is more conservative, more Christian, more true-blue Republican. “When candidates start trumpeting their labels, it’s a giveaway they don’t have much else to talk about.”