Soren Dayton' s smart take on this New York Times story about social conservative intimations of a third-party run should Rudy Giuliani win the Republican nomination can be found here. Dayton's most interesting point:
There are now about an equal number of "War on Terror" conservatives as there are social conservatives. This kind of situation is how parties change. There is an underlying reality to a Giuliani candidacy that a lot of pundits have not understood yet. The post-George W. Bush, post-9/11 party is different than it used to be. More socially conservative, but also more conservative on the war on terror. And Rudy is their ticket to a seat at the table.
People tend to assume that things will stay the way they are at any given moment, and that the conditions which led to George W. Bush's nomination in 2000 are the same prevailing conditions today. Thus the candidate most like George W. Bush is most likely to win the GOP nomination. Except the conditions are not the same--and Bush did a lot to change them. This isn't to say that Giuliani is likely to win the nomination--far from it. It's to say that he has a better chance than many pundits think he has. And that's because the war on terror is the foremost issue on GOP voters' minds. Any prospective Republican nominee will have to prove to those voters that he understands the war on terror and will continue vigorously to prosecute it.