Shining A Light On Realconservativ

Realconservativ was on display bright and early yesterday morning with the news that Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas was expected to exit the 2008 Presidential race today due to woeful fundraising. Senator Brownback is apparently kicking around the idea of running for Governor in Kansas in 2010.

I thought that Senator Brownback might be a dark horse spoiler in the Republican field because of his uncompromising culture warrior status with social conservatives. I figured that Senator Brownback would never actually be the Republican nominee because he would never garner enough support outside of social conservative circles, but because of the significant minority status of social conservatives, he might command enough of a share of the vote to drag the Republican platform and nominee further out of the American mainstream toward the radical fringe of whiny nanny state conservatism.

But I was wrong. The social conservatives have shown their true colors...their true realconservativ...in this election cycle by foregoing Senator Brownback. I've suspected for a few months that there was something odd going down in the social conservative power broker circles; Brownback never got traction financially, never got traction in the media and didn't seem to turn out any of the fabled social conservative masses in Iowa or South Carolina.

My suspicion is that the social conservatives are going to hold their noses and hop on the Giuliani bandwagon because he's perceived as a winner and he also has the authoritarian appeal that socially conservative voters crave. I thought Fred Thompson was poised to capture their allegiance, but his stumbling and bumbling out of the gate, in particular his refusal to flog his Christian-ness as part of his campaign, seems to have turned off the social conservatives. All Giuliani will have to do is say a couple of throwaway lines along the way about how we need more prayer in school or how he's reconsidered his stance on Roe v. Wade and suddenly he'll be hailed by the likes of James Dobson as the candidate for "values voters".

For some people, winning has a virtue that trumps all other virtues.