Fred Barnes is a willful idiot. But he may have made a point I hadn’t considered. Common wisdom is that a pro-choice candidate cannot win the Republican primaries but, if they could, they would be viable in the general election. While considering Rudolph Guiliani’s campaign, Barnes makes the opposite assessment.

Given Giuliani’s skill as a campaigner, he might overcome the abortion problem in the Republican caucuses and primaries. He doesn’t need to win a majority to capture the presidential nomination, just finish first in most of the contests. But the general election is another matter. In it, he’d probably have to get 50 percent of the vote, or close to it, to defeat Hillary Clinton or any Democrat.

That’s where the social conservatives come in. If Giuliani is the Republican nominee–and he’s the frontrunner at the moment–a pro-life candidate is bound to run on a third party ticket.

I don’t think the third-party threat is necessary to make Guiliani non-viable. The Republicans start out in a hole in a two-way race. And, while Guiliani will get a look from a lot of pro-choice Republicans, independents, and Democrats, he’ll lose a lot of the GOP base through apathy and/or disgust. I think the differential turnout would doom him.

But he might be able to win the nomination if the pro-life vote is splintered among several candidates. He will need several candidates to remain in the race long enough for him to accumulate the delegates he needs. If it becomes a race between Guiliani and just one other major rival, he could find it impossible to win the nomination.