Republican candidates running to the Right

A day after James Dobson came out blasting Fred Thompson for his weakness on religious issues, the Religious Right vote appears more open than ever. Many of GOP presidential candidates have been busy in the past few days courting social conservatives.

Mike Huckabee expressed reluctance to provide funding to groups that distribute condoms in Africa. Huckabee answered a CNN interview:

I've been a little reluctant to think that condoms alone are the most effective way,” Huckabee said. “It certainly is more effective than not having them. But I think helping people understand that condoms do have a failure rate, and they are not totally 100 percent successful. And it gives some people a false sense of security thinking that they can still live dangerously and recklessly and that that’s going to be a fail safe protection when it obviously is not.

Huckabee, an ordained minister, is seen today as the favorite of religious leaders who are disappointed with the other candidates they denounce as weak flip-floppers. Clearly wanting to further that gap between the major candidates and the religious leaders, Huckabee added, “You’re not going to go to the Internet and find some YouTube moment of me saying something dramatically different.” This is an obvious slap at Romney and Giuliani, and it will be interesting to see whether Huckabee will push this further. No one has taken Giuliani on for his moderate past for now, and someone will need to if they want Giuliani knocked down his pedestal.

Giuliani is doing his own bit to convince social conservatives he is one of their own. Yesterday, Rep. King of NY, a supporter of Giuliani's campaign, declared that "there were to many mosques in America." Asked to comment today, Giuliani rushed to King's defense:

I know exactly what Pete meant. I knew what he meant before I heard the clarification... what he meant was there are mosques where violence is preached. I know that from my own investigations of Islamic terrorism. I also know there are many mosques where it isn’t.

Not to be undone, Senator Brownback (who we haven't heard much from since his disappointing third-place showing in the Ames caucuses) has introduced a bill in the Senate requiring women who want an abortion to first submit to an ultrasound! Forget parental authorizations, 3-day waiting periods, Brownback has a better idea! He wrote in the press release, "I am hopeful that this bill will inform women and will cause a deeper reflection on the humanity of unborn children."

Brownback was good enough to allow his proposed bill to not require the woman to actually look at the screen: "The requirements of the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act are placed solely on the doctor, not the patient. A woman seeking an abortion may refuse to view the images of the ultrasound after the results are made available to her."

Finally, Fred Thompson keeps not being in touch with current events. Asked about the Jena Six scandal today, Thompson could simply answer, "I don't know anything about it."