Conservative core seeks a contender

For decades, the conservative movement has been the animating force of the Republican Party, providing the ideas and energy that catapulted candidates to the GOP presidential nomination and, often, the White House.

But as conservatives survey the 2008 field -- and, particularly, the early Republican front-runners -- many are despairing. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani have all broken with conservative orthodoxy at one time or another. Many activists have neither forgiven nor forgotten.

"There's absolutely no contender that is a bona fide conservative," said K.B. Forbes, who has worked for a number of conservative candidates and causes since the 1990s. "We have insiders, squishes and moderates running for president."

The candidate closest to the heart of social conservatives, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, plans to formally launch his White House bid today with a speech in Topeka. But even those who admire Brownback, and especially his Senate leadership opposing abortion, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research, question the viability of his candidacy.

"Brownback has to prove he can win," said Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

Land sees different problems for the three leading GOP hopefuls. "Most social conservatives at present are uncomfortable with McCain," he said. "They're appalled by Giuliani." As for Romney, Land said, "He has to convince social conservatives he's become one of them."

It's a striking state of affairs, given the ascendance of the conservative movement since 1964. Although he was crushed in the general election that year, Arizona's Barry Goldwater wrested the Republican Party from its Midwest and Eastern roots, starting a realignment that eventually turned the GOP into the party of Ronald Reagan, the Sunbelt and the South.

The absence of a purebred conservative candidate this time, at least among the early leaders, is partly happenstance. Favorites such as Vice President Dick Cheney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush have chosen not to run. Former Sen. George Allen of Virginia, who was positioning himself as heir to the Reagan mantle, was defeated for reelection in perhaps the biggest upset of 2006, as was ex-Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a hero to many evangelicals.