You Heard it Here First

In a Washington Times piece, American Spectator Editor R. Emmet Tyrell Jr. predicts that Giuliani as a candidate will prevail over the various factions of the conservative movement:

"Rudy Giuliani's announcement he will seek the Republican presidential nomination brings to my mind a book I wrote in the early 1990s, "The Conservative Crack-Up." When I wrote the book, Ronald Reagan's successor, President George H. W. Bush, was ignoring many of the constituent ingredients of the Reagan Revolution, for instance, tax cuts. The various factions of the conservative coalition were disgruntled and threatening to take a walk. Once again liberal pundits were diagnosing the conservative movement as moribund. Ever since the conservative movement's ascendancy within the Republican Party in 1964, these grim diagnoses have been handed down episodically. Every time there is dissatisfaction among conservatives or they suffer some electoral setback, the liberal pundits step forward and pronounce the modern conservative movement at death's door. In my book, I ventured the witticism that "conservatism is America's longest dying political movement."

immanent eschaton's scrupulously non-partisan position notwithstanding, we nonetheless prognosticate that a Giuliani candidacy will probably prompt a third party run by a candidate of the "religious right".