James Dobson's threat not to vote for Rudy Giuliani in a general election seems a little suspect. Even though Giuliani reversed his commitment to appoint judges who will overturn Roe, the hope that he'll occasionally nominate an anti-Roe judge or two will be better than Dobson can expect from any Democrat. Still, Rudy is liberal enough on the issue that bluffing doesn't seem like bad strategy from Dobson's position, and I can imagine a nontrivial percentage of anti-abortion voters actually staying home.
It's amazing how unsatisfying the top-tier GOP candidates are to the base. Romney and Giuliani are completely untrustworthy on social issues, while McCain's support for immigration reform is causing all manner of grief. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich is roaming the hinterlands, attacking "radical secularists" in his commencement speech at Liberty University and opposing the immigration bill at the Georgia Republican convention. If support for each of the top three GOP options is as soft as I imagine it is, and if Fred Thompson's 1994 support for keeping abortion legal in the 1st trimester disqualifies him from being the base candidate, I could see major Gingrich support emerging. He'll need a less lame-sounding answer than "I think that abortion should not be legal, and I think that how you would implement that I’m not sure," but at least it leaves open the possibility of a more fiery and flip-flop-free anti-abortion position later.
