Dear Jake The Goose,
Well, perhaps you know 5000 REPUBLICANS who were at his speech. It's likely that the sort of folks who went to this speech were mostly the sort of Republicans who will dutifully vote for whomever has the "R" on his back.
I'm sure that many of these folks are socially conservative, but it's not likely that they're all (or even mostly) social conservatives.
I know folks like this. They try to get my wife and I to to go door-to-door knocking before the election with them, or sit at the polls on election day handing out candidate literature, etc. Sometimes we help, sometimes we don't. My wife and I do what we can, but Republican Party activities aren't central to our lives. To these folks, these activities are an important focus in their lives. In a sense, they're true believers. But they're true believers about the PARTY, not about any specific set of issues.
They're good folks, and we need 'em, as they're the really active folks that make a lot of good stuff happen.
But they don't completely represent the party as a whole, and they don't resemble social conservatives very much at all.
These are the same folks that got Mr. Bush, the father, re-nominated in 1992, even though he'd become toxic to supply-siders and low-taxers.
If the Republicans decide to throw overboard one part of the Republican coalition (social conservatives, in this case), it is unlikely that the Republican candidate will win.
sitetest
If the Republicans decide to throw overboard one part of the Republican coalition (social conservatives, in this case), it is unlikely that the Republican candidate will win.