They Heart Huckabee

Rudy Giuliani appeared at a Family Research Council meeting on Saturday. It went well, in the sense that no one threw anything at him. But to say they lack enthusiasm for him would be an understatement. In a Family Research Council straw poll, he came in 9th, four slots below "Undecided." The winners were Mitt Romney, with 27.6%, and Mike Huckabee, with 27.2%.

What's interesting about this event is how it reveals the deep rifts that have formed in the Republican party. Here we have the religious right declaring Romney and Huckabee to be in a virtual tie for their endorsement. But in the most recent CBS News poll of Republican primary voters, Giuliani has a clear lead with 29% of the vote. Romney and Huckabee get 12% and 4%. There are rumblings among some evangelicals about voting for third-party candidates, or even launching a third party of their own. The religious right feels they're being ignored by the rest of the party, and it's hard to argue they're wrong.

Another startling example of a rift in the party is a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll from about two weeks ago that shows nearly six in ten Republicans agree with a statement that free trade has been harmful to the U.S. economy. Protectionist sentiments, once mainly the province of fringe elements like Lou Dobbs, appear to have won over the mainstream of the party. Yet none of the front-runners have taken a protectionist stance.

The current lack of enthusiasm on the part of Republican voters reflects more than just a lack of good candidates. The Republican coalition has broken down, and large groups of people within the party feel their views are not being represented. This isn't a permanent condition, of course -- the Democrats have suffered the same problem many times, and recovered. But before they can assume power the way they did in the 1990s, the Republicans will need to build a new coalition, and likely find a different set of core issues.