Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

John Hawkins at Right Wing News provides an analysis of his latest survey of bloggers, this one on their most and least desired 2008 Republican nominee. Here's the info on the top four:

1) Fred Thompson: Fred Thompson is generating enormous grassroots enthusiasm on the right, which is a pretty good trick given that conservatives in general seems to be dispirited and angry. In other words, Fred is the conservative Barack Obama, but unlike Barack, Thompson is essentially even with Giuliani in most polls that don't include Newt Gingrich. If Fred can keep the momentum going once he gets in the race, he'll be hard to stop, but there's no guarantee he can pull it off at this point.

2) Duncan Hunter: Duncan Hunter started the race with his name recognition somewhere around 10% or so and unfortunately, because a lot of voters just aren't tuned in this time of year, he has had trouble gaining ground. On the other hand, bloggers are always paying attention and because of that, he has managed to quickly add a lot of fans online. In the blogosphere, Hunter is a top tier candidate, but with Fred overshadowing him, it has been very hard to leverage blog support into real world support in places like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The base -- the ones that know about him at least -- definitely like what he's selling, but will enough of them find out what he's all about before the primaries in early 2008? Time will tell and the clock is ticking...

3) Rudy Giuliani: Given that Rudy is not a conservative and that bloggers are very aware of that fact, this is an excellent finish for him. What it means is that there are a lot of conservatives who are willing to overlook his deficiencies in a number of areas because they think he's charismatic, electable, and is saying all the right things in the fight against radical Islam.

Rudy has proven that he has staying power and a significant base of support, but the question is whether it will be enough when the field starts to winnow and voters supporting lesser candidates have to decide where to go. Will they move to Rudy [or] stay to his right? The answer to that question may decide who the Republican nominee is in 2008.

4) Mitt Romney: Make no mistake about it, Mitt is smooth, polished, he has proven he can raise money, and he has an excellent campaign strategy (Spend lots of money to win in Iowa and New Hampshire and then hope that slingshots him to victory). That being said, whether it's because he's a Mormon, because he's a little to slick, or because he strikes a lot of people as a Johnny-Come-Lately to conservatism, his support is staying relatively flat nationally and he's having a lot of trouble winning the base over. Ultimately, if he's going to win, he's going to have to find a way to pull in a bigger slice of the conservative pie across the country.

So, who finished dead last? Ron Paul.

And you thought there was big support for Paul among online conservatives?

Hawkins:

The honest truth is that he's always going to stink it up in any poll his supporters can't spam. That's because Paul's supporters are not, for the most part, mainstream conservatives.

They're "Big L" Libertarians who'll be voting for whatever loser the Libertarian Party puts up in 2008, conspiracy theorists, anti-war liberals, along with a few "Little L" Libertarians, anti-war conservatives, and Paleo-cons thrown in.

What that means is that Paul's support may be enthusiastic, but it's also drawn from a very narrow segment of population that can't get that much bigger than it already happens to be.

I like Ron Paul. But until he manages to convince the conspiracy theory nutballs and their endless worrying about the North American Union and the Council on Foreign Relations and the black helicopters off of conservative talk radio, he'll never convince mainstream conservatives that he's not a nutball.