Religious Right moving towards Romney, confirming its determination to derail Giuliani

A few days ago, James Dobson went on Fox News and made it evident that the Religious Right was not just pressuring Giuliani with empty threats -- and that for many social conservatives Giuliani is not the lesser of two evils, but rather the politician who could destroy the pro-life movement. Yesterday, another prominent social conservative, Randall Terry, voiced a similar argument. He clearly explained why Hillary Clinton could be a better option for the Religious Right than Rudy Giuliani:

As President Giuliani would be the de-facto head of the GOP; he would systematically destroy the political power of the pro-life movement within the GOP; he would pressure the party to take the pro-life plank out of the party platform; he would declare the "abortion issue" is divisive, and should not be part of federal races; he would make the GOP the mirror image of the DNC regarding child-killing, thus insuring that there is no pro-life party.

Giuliani's saving grace up to now has been that his adversaries - whether it be the NRA or social conservatives - have no good alternative around which to coalesce: Thompson is anti gay marriage amendment, McCain has passed campaign finance, and Romney, well, probably has as much baggage than Giuliani. Huckabee is probably the closest to the social conservatives' hearts, but he has not broken in the top-tier. Yet, Romney has been willing to endorse most anti-gay, pro-life positions over the past two years -- and conservative leaders appear to believe that's as good as they're going to get in this cycle.

And in this context comes news this week-end that conservative leaders have realized that they need to support one candidate if they hope to derail Giuliani, and they are moving towards Mitt Romney. The Washington Times reports that staunch Giuliani opponent Tony Perkins and former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer are defending Mitt Romney. Perkins went as far as saying, "I don't think he's flip-flopping." Seducing the Religious Right has been Romney's dream for months -- and he seems close to reaching his goal.

Meanwhile Giuliani did get some good news today: Tommy Thompson, who was running for the nomination until a month ago, endorsed Rudy Giuliani. Thompson was a 14-year Wisconsin Governor, and served in the Bush cabinet. He will probably not move many votes at all, but Giuliani needs to show the Republican establishment is comfortable with him. And Thompson is pro-life... which can only help Rudy in light of current events. Thompson invoked 9-11 to justify his endorsement: "He is America's mayor, and during a period of time of great stress for this country he showed tremendous leadership."