Terry Jeffrey unleashes the social conservative anti-Rudy argument over at National Review this morning. We can skip past the first 791 words and cut right to Jeffrey's conclusion:

Rudy will not win the Republican nomination because enough of the people who vote in Republican caucuses and primaries still respect life and marriage, and are not ready to give up on them -- or on the Republican party as an agent for protecting them.

And Tony Perkins, Chairman of the Family Research Council, was quick to issue the standard social conservative threat:

"If by some chance Giuliani were to gain the Republican nomination it would set up a very similar scenario that we had last November. A unenthusiastic Republican base which will suppress turnout and set up a Democratic victory."

Except the problem last November wasn't Republican turnout, it was Independents and moderates who turned out and voted Democrat. Perkins wants to use the threat of a Democratic victory in November 2008 to bully Republicans into nominating a social conservative - like Sam Brownback, for example - with the irony being that such a candidate would likely get beat in '08 by any of the top tier Democrats while Guiliani would be a favorite to win.

UPDATE: Let me revise and extend the above remark, since I think it was sloppily put: the issue isn't that any "social conservative" would automatically run poorly in the general election. Obviously, George W. Bush is a social conservative, as was Ronald Reagan. The point I was trying to make is the irony of Perkins trying to use the threat of a general election loss to try and run Giuliani out of the nomination process when he's clearly got the most general election appeal of anyone in the field.