New York Sun political writer Ryan Sager examines why the Republicans aren't doomed to lose the 2008 presidential race, despite President Bush's dismal poll numbers and the unpopular war in Iraq.
The short answer, as provided by Pew's Andrew Kohut, is this:
[T]he crucial personal dimension in a period of national discontent, is whether the candidate is seen as an agent of change. And at this early stage in the game, the Republican front runners might just fill that bill. A recent Pew survey found that most voters make a big distinction between both John McCain and Rudy Giuliani and President Bush. Both candidates are seen as less conservative than Bush, and much closer to the average voter's own political beliefs.
Sager says Kohut's theory "is confirmed by the fact that Rudy Giuliani and John McCain have similar appeal to independents as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
I'm not so sure that's true about McCain anymore - I don't recall which poll but one recently showed he has lost a lot of the support he enjoyed among independents back in 2000.
Sager notes that "centrist" appeal "is also supposed to be a liability" for Giuliani and McCain in the primaries, but "it hasn't been so far," as evidenced by Giuliani's lead in most national polls and the fact that Mitt Romney, pitched as the "true-conservative" and "religious-right" candidate among the big three has done well in fund-raising but lags in the polls.
Sager says the support for "centrists" McCain and Giuliani shows that Republican primary voters "are being rather pragmatic so far," meaning they're backing candidates they believe can defeat Clinton, Obama or whomever the Democrats nominate.
Here's more from that Andrew Kohut article that Sager linked to:
The message of the horse race polls for the Republican Party may be that while McCain, and Giuliani might be perceived as insufficiently conservative for a majority of GOP voters, ultimately only they, or someone else with centrist appeal, may be able to hold off the broad advantage the Democrats have going into this election.
I've long believed that Guiliani's primary advantage is that he is viewed as a candidate who can win the general election, while most of his GOP rivals are not perceived that way. Romney hasn't proven he can translate fund-raising acumen into broad support nationally, McCain isn't doing as well as he should be given he was once the "front-runner," and the rest of the field simply hasn't caught fire at all even though it's stuffed with true-blue conservatives and the Republican primaries are dominated by conservative voters.
That Giuliani is ahead despite his liberal social views and his rather, uh, colorful private life, is due to his perceived electability in November more than anything, but that strength becomes a weakness if a more conservative candidate enters the race who GOP voters also believe can win in November.
Newt Gingrich isn't that candidate. Too polarizing. Fred Thompson, though, won huge landslides in his two Senate races from Tennessee, winning over many moderate Democrats. He's a conservative with a solidly conservative voting record who appeals to centrists the same way that Ronald Reagan once did.
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