Per Jason's recommendation below, I checked out Glenn Greenwald's argument that Rudy Giuliani will not have difficulty winning over the GOP social conservative base. Greenwald's argument has two parts. The first is that social conservatives consider foreign policy to be part of social policy. "Our Middle East foreign policy," he writes, "is a critical, really the predominant, item on their moral and religious agenda." Greenwald produces several quotes from social conservatives expressing support for President Bush's foreign policy on spiritual grounds, but zero quotes from social conservatives saying foreign policy is the predominant item on their agenda. I don't believe it is, though that's hard to prove. Anyway, they'll have a chance to support a candidate who upholds their foreign policy views and who opposes abortion and is not a prominent supporter of gay rights. Greenwald's second argument is that Giuliani's highly libertine personal life won't hurt him, because conservatives always overlook the personal flaws of their leaders, like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. The trouble with this analogy is that Gingrich and Limbaugh were not subject to popular elections. There will be other Republicans doing everything in their power to make social conservatives aware of Giuliani's history. Nothing of the sort happened to Gingrich or Limbaugh. Now, it's true that if Giuliani were to get the nomination, social conservatives would rally around him and mostly forget about his flaws. But that won't matter if he can't get the nomination in the first place, and I think he can't. The GOP elite can manipulate the social conservative base pretty effectively, but you can only con them so much, and in a wide-open race there's no way the truth about Giuliani won't come out. --Jonathan Chait