The Occasional Observer

For those who read EyeOn08, you know what you're getting: a steady diet of Romney-bashing. That said, when Soren ("Eye") gets off his agenda for a few minutes, he can be an extremely insightful blogger. His back and forth with Patrick Ruffini was some of the most interesting stuff from this cycle.

And today he's made a point which really hits home, offering one theory for FDT's meteroic rise. Why is it that this candidate--one who has many limitations, from his background to his ideology--is becoming the "conservative" counterpoint to Rudy (sucking up oxygen from McCain, Romney, and the 2nd tier candidates) in the GOP primary?

The short answer: "a Thompson candidacy is getting its support from conservative groups partly to maintain some level of control over the party apparatus."

His reasoning begins with the following premise: if Rudy wins the nomination,

...out of necessity [the GOP] would need to recruit a whole new set of volunteers. As I pointed out last week, pro-lifers form a significant portion of the GOP activist base. Those people will not volunteer for Rudy. Many of those activists won’t even vote for him. Let’s assume, for a second, that the GOP and the Giuliani campaign would be able to recruit a new activist base. This would shatter the grip that social conservative activists have on the grassroots of the party. [Soren's emphasis]

Change is painful. People in control don't like to be bumped out. At the grass roots level, party insiders who have the job of building and running the GOTV apparatus are afraid of how (if?) they will be able to perform with Rudy at the top of the ticket. That doesn't mean Rudy can't win, just that the party will look a lot different if he does. There are pockets of entrenched power within the GOP (and, more than that, party leadership) that will want to prevent Rudy from becoming a change agent.

Soren's description of Fred's rise is, as a result, the most accurate I've seen (in as much as it explains the discrepancy between how FDT is treated, despite his obvious shortcomings, and the way other candidates' shortcomings are treated):

Fred Thompson is increasingly appearing to be the candidate of social conservatives. (if that proposition had been offered in 2000, it would have been laughable) Perhaps more precisely, he is becoming a part of the candidate of the existing coalition, which is "with but not of" the social conservative movement. [my emphasis]

This explains why so many insiders (and their blogosphere surrogates like FredState) are for Fred, and why many Social Conservatives (like me) are bewildered at how this man is becoming the standardbearer for other SoCons, what with the mulitple marriages, mixed bag in his track record on life issues (complete with a lot more equivocation than Mitt in terms of the fact that his position has changed), undistinguished legislative career, preference for TV over governing, and so on.

I would also love to get the skinny if Soren was hearing grumblings or was just putting together puzzle pieces in his mind.