The National Right to Life Committee has now explained its curious decision yesterday to endorse the cratering campaign of Fred Thompson, and the explanation is that they have no one on staff who can read a poll. That's not how they put it, of course, but how else to interpret this quote from Executive Director David O'Steen:
We look at the fact that while there are various polls, and some are up
and down, the overwhelming consensus has been that [Thompson] is best
positioned to top pro-abortion candidate Rudy Giuliani for the
Republican nomination.
I hope this is a (highly lame) rationale for a decision that was made on other grounds, because the alternative is that the folks at NRLC have all lost their minds. It's not merely that Mitt Romney is vastly better positioned to beat Giuliani for the nomination than Thompson; at this point, you could probably make the case that even John McCain and Mike Huckabee have a better shot (and I don't mean that in a good way). Ross Douthat and Daniel Larison have more to say on the subject.
--Christopher Orr