E Pluribus Unum

It's a truism that after 8 years of any president, voters will go with someone who is NOT like the incumbent. And it would appear that the Republicans had figured this out:

A year ago, few could have predicted that the three front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination would be a U.S. senator [McCain] who favors embryonic stem cell research and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a governor [Romney] who twice campaigned on defending abortion rights, and a former mayor [Giuliani] who not only supports gay rights but moved in with a gay couple -- and their pet Shih Tzu -- after the breakup of his second marriage.

Like I said, these three front-runners seem to understand that the majority of the electorate is moving away from the Bush-Cheney-Rove brand of smash-mouth ideology. And not only that: the party has also been presented gift-wrapped blueprint for victory, courtesy of a fourth man who is, unfortunately for the GOP, consitutionally prohibited from running in '08: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This would all seem to be good news for a party that got its teeth reciprocally knocked out by an angry electorate in the midterm elections. But do you think the Republicans will listen? Don't count on it. In fact, they've already done a 180 away from Schwarzenegger and back toward Bush's toxic style of ideology.

...[W]ith their eyes on the upcoming GOP primaries, which are dominated by conservative voters, all three of the front-runners have begun tilting to the right. In the past year, McCain said he supported (with some caveats) the South Dakota abortion ban that state voters overturned in November, and gave the commencement address at Liberty University, which was founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell, whom McCain once called "evil" during his White House bid in 2000.

Most recently, McCain received an endorsement last Friday from Marlys Popma, a conservative GOP activist in Iowa, who previously served as the president of Iowa's Right to Life Committee and as deputy national political director for 2000 presidential candidate Gary Bauer. In a press release announcing the endorsement, Popma said she was supporting McCain, in part, because of McCain's "willingness to sign pro-life legislation."

Romney now calls himself pro-life and favors leaving it up to the states to determine the legality of abortion. He also now opposes embryonic stem cell research and has asked his state's highest court to force an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment onto the ballot in 2008.

And in May, Giuliani stumped for former Christian Coalition honcho Ralph Reed, who lost his bid to be Georgia's lieutenant governor due in part to his ties to convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

This is just ... weird. Oh, sure, they'll please the likes of Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation) and Charmaine Yoest (Family Research Council) but the rest of the country is not of a mind to cooperate. In short, the writing is on the wall, but these three guys drove by so fast (and in the wrong direction) that they couldn't read it: for the first time in 50 years, the majority party in Congress does not include the South -- which is exactly where the Republican base is strongest. It's a wonder they're not suffering from whiplash.

And this should all be welcome news for Sen. Clinton because all the arguments about her lack of "electability" go right out the window if her likely opponent is one of these three guys (or anyone to the right of them).