Jay Cost writes about the policy differences among the top three GOP presidential candidates. What's important about this post is that Cost reminds us that most most voters are nonideological:
One of my biggest problems with popular analysis of politics - the kind that takes the primary/general two-step as axiomatic - is that it presumes a level of ideological sophistication on the part of the voting public (primary or general) that has been shown not to exist. Voters are not nearly as ideological as pundits and elites think they are. They are therefore susceptible to appeals that are not reducible to basic issue positioning.
Cost goes on to describe the appeals of Romney and Giuliani:
While Romney has worked to reposition himself in the Republican Party, Giuliani has pursued a different path. He has not changed his issue positions like Romney. He does not deny that differences persist to this day. ... He admits that there are differences between the GOP and him. He's betting that this admission will build respect and trust - and therefore confidence that he will do in office what he says he will do. He has supplemented this by doing something that Hillary Clinton is also doing. Clinton's anti-Republican rhetoric has been matched only by Giuliani's anti-Democratic rhetoric. I think that Giuliani's strategy is therefore two-fold: (a) Admit that there are differences. Be candid and hope the voters will respect you; (b) Attack the Democratic Party so that voters recognize that there are many more similarities than differences.
Both Romney's and Giuliani's strategy could work, Cost concludes. The complication is Fred Thompson. "Why vote for somebody who claims to be a conservative," Cost writes, "but who might not be honest about it - or for somebody who is honest, but who is not a through-and-through conservative?" With Thompson, "You can have both." True! The complication is that Thompson's stump performances have left plenty of audiences disillusioned. Which means the great variable in this race continues to be how Thompson's "laid-back manner" engages (or fails to engage) voters.