Republican Dissatisfaction with Their Lousy Candidates
A moderate, secular Republican might look at Rudy, McCain, and Willard and be happy with his choices.  Not so for a Bush-loving evangelical.  To the activist base (the kind of people who give money to fear- and hate-based right-wing direct mail solicitations, who go door-to-door, who volunteer their time, etc.), the field seems disingenuous at best.  Compared to a president who stood fast against stem cell research, judges, and gays, and who mass-marketed his religiosity, the 2008 field simply can't fake it as good as Dubya could.

The hour is late.  The time is at hand.  Thompson is turning out to be a major dud.  This cycle features absolutely nothing to motivate the Christian right, unless we nominate Sen. Clinton.

Dr. James Dobson - Still on Top
Although we keep waiting for a new wave of leadership to emerge within the Christian right after the downfall of Ted Haggard and the deaths of Jerry Falwell and D. James Kenney, Dobson is still their most influential spokesman and opinion-maker.  Dobson doesn't even have to say he isn't going to support a socially liberal, Cuomo-endorsing Catholic from New York.  He can't say much about Willard without igniting a firestorm of controversy among his constituents, most of whom like Mitt personally but believe he's part of a cult and/or going to hell.

So, rewind to last fall/winter.  Delay was crucified (but didn't rise again).  Bill Frist, it turned out, only had one political life (unlike most cats, who reportedly have nine).  The GOP just got hammered in the midterms.  The pundit class was chiseling "R.I.P." on the Christan right's tombstone (prematurely, I must insist).  It was looking like maybe Gingrich was going to be savior of the conservative movement.  He was even on a God-and-country book tour, during which he sat down in early March with Dr. Dobson in his Colorado Springs radio studio to talk about -foreign policy- -domestic policy- sex and religion:

   DOBSON: Let me ask you about your family life. This is very, very personal and delicate and I appreciate your willingness to address it again. But you've been married three times under some circumstances that disappointed some of your supporters. And there are some questions associated with that era that remain unanswered with regard to an affair or maybe more than one. Would you take a run at that for our listeners?

    GINGRICH: Yeah. And it's a very painful topic and I confess that directly to you. And it has some elements of it that I'm not in any way proud of.

(...)

    DOBSON:  You know, I believe you to be a professing Christian and you and I have prayed together, but when I heard you talk about this dark side of your life and when we were in Washington, you spoke of it with a great deal of pain and anguish, but you didn't mention repentance. Do you understand that word, repentance?

    GINGRICH: Absolutely.

(...)

    DOBSON: Obviously the reason that I ask is that you are a national leader, despite the fact that you're not in public office at this time. And many of the concepts and ideas that you've expressed, last time and today, are things that I agree with, and I think it's really important and will be for many of our listeners to know your responses to that point of disappointment back there someplace. And I really appreciate your willingness to do so.

To be honest, I don't know who drafted Fred Thompson into the race.  But most evangelicals must not have been impressed with Newt's confession and pardon on Dobson's radio show, because suddently it seemed that Thompson was their go-to guy, no thanks to Dobson (note the date):

"Everyone knows he's conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for," Dobson said of Thompson. "[But] I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression," Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party's conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

This spring, while Dobson was busy saying that Thompson wasn't even a Christian, let alone a suitable nominee, Gingrich took up Jerry Falwell's invitation to address the graduates at Liberty University, and had no intention of getting into the race until the fall:

"This idea that you've got to run for an entire year to get permission to run for an entire year, to finally get permission to have the country mad at you just strikes me as nuts," Gingrich told WND.

[...]

Gingrich insisted his plan to wait until September is not based on any hesitation about his viability as a candidate.

"I am not even going to allow myself to think about a decision prior to Labor Day, because I think (the current campaign system) is bad for the country," he said. "I'm thinking about health care, about energy, about immigration, about the environment, about Iraq. I'm trying to figure out how you solve these things, how you bring the country together, not how I organize my faction."

That Was Then, This Is Now
As everyone here knows, last week Dobson wrote an email slamming Thompson, which was leaked to the AP:

"Isn't Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won't talk at all about what he believes, and can't speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson wrote.

"He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent 'want to.' And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"

Where's Gingrich?  Well, he's got a busy weekend ahead of him:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is examining whether or not to enter a "testing the waters" campaign phase beginning the first week of October. According to Gingrich associates, he is mulling an announcement tour that would include appearances on one major Sunday morning show next weekend, along with several Fox News shows on Monday, as well as an appearance on Dr. James Dobson's radio show.

"It's not a coincidence that you saw Dr. Dobson attacking Fred Thompson when he did," says a former associate of Dobson's. "There's a strategy here, and it's about clearing the way for Gingrich to get in."

Is it a slam dunk?  No.  But it wouldn't surprise me a bit.