"There will be further exploration of what is to be done," said Howard Phillips, the president of the Conservative Caucus, who participated in the Salt Lake meeting. "And there will be some discussion of who would be a viable independent candidate."

They will be exploring forever, they've got nowhere to go. Out of the supposed "top tier" Republicans, Thompson is boring, McCain is broke, Giuliani is Scoop and Dump, Romney is a neoliberal Mormon, etc. They were supposed to use the Primary to find this person, where they not? Maybe they should go back to the days before the Moral Majority and just stay out of politics, all they are doing is embarrassing themselves.

If the evangelicals threaten to leave, where are they going to go? The Constitution Party? A lot of people in the Constitution Party already support Ron Paul, same with the Libertarian party and the other third parties out there. If anyone is going to have a real third party presence it will be Ron Paul, not the "Values Voter". If Ron Paul doesn't get the nomination, he will be the big third party candidate, even if it isn't his "intent" at the moment to do it. If his supporters can get him in the debates and on the ballets and Paul won't endorse the nominee (as he said he currently would not do), you really think he will say no to a third party run?

To me that means that this is all a worthless exercise on the part of the Christian-right and isn't going to get them anywhere. They can either stay home during the primaries, and if Giuliani wins (assuming Ron Paul doesn't get it), that means Ron Paul didn't win, and will most likely be the third party candidate, a real anti-establishment, REAL anti-war, "protest" candidate. He has the potential to get a lot of support as a third party candidate, and he is also pro-life.

So again, I wonder where the evangelicals are going to go, and does it matter? Ron Paul meets the criteria of being pro-life. If Ron Paul gets the republican nomination, then what excuse are the evangelicals going to use to not support him? Would they support him or would they instead use his anti-war and anti-"Aid to Israel" stances as their reason to not support him, exposing their hypocrisy and war lust? Would they still support a 3rd party candidate? Who? A pro-war pro-lifer? Didn't they have the whole primary to find one? Where is this person going to come from?

And if Giuliani wins the nomination and Ron Paul still has strong support (which he will), and changed his "intent" to run (which seems very likely to a lot of people), what will the evangelicals do then? Find someone else? All it would do is split the third party pro-life people up along war lines, since Paul is already pro-life but antiwar, the new candidate would obviously be pro-war/AIPAC, or else they could have choose to support Paul already. It would do nothing but split the pro-war vote, but if Paul is running 3rd party, who cares? Paul would be antiwar, and would be able to flank Hillary from the left on the War, and would most likely flank this 3rd party Knight in Shining Armor, and Giuliani for sure, on the rest of the issue that are important to the right.

As has been stated, if they wanted a real pro-life candidate they have a few that they could get behind. What they REALLY want is a pro-life candidate who is also a massive hawk and will bring the rapture. BOTH criteria need to be met, not just the pro-life one. The problem for them is that they have nobody worth mentioning to run behind, and wasted their primary buying into the hype of Thompson and conditioning themseves that Ron Paul "can't win"/"isn't pro-AIPAC"/etc. instead of trying to find/endorse a real pro-life candidate. Paul even showed up at their Values Voter debate. Go look at Ron Paul's new money ticker, he will raise more money in October than either the Huckster or Brownback raised the entire 3rd Quarter. He is crashing the party for the warmongers on the right, especially the ones that try and hide behind Abortion when they really mean pro-life + The Rapture.