Republican sanity

This is very encouraging. In a survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, Rudy Giuliani is the top choice for the party's Presidential nominee in 2008, with fellow moderates Condoleezza Rice and John McCain in second and third place. As responses to the following question (too liberal vs. too conservative) show, Giuliani is widely considered politically acceptable on both sides of the political divide, and would thus be an ideal leader to overcome the polarization of much of the American people into mutually-uncomprehending leftist and rightist camps. Clearly much of the Republican rank and file is tired of the stranglehold of the Christian Right and other ideological hard-liners on their party.

The results among Democrats are less encouraging. Hillary Clinton, a polarizing figure (that is, with wide appeal on the left but unacceptable to most on the right) is still the strong front-runner among them. Nevertheless, the survey shows that Giuliani would defeat Clinton easily in a general election. This bears out my view that victory will go to whichever party moves away from its hard-line ideological base and toward the center.