Rudy Giuliani is currently the clear front-runner on the Republican side for the nomination. He leads in every major poll, he’s got a 13-14 point lead on Romney on Intrade, and in a fairly weak Republican field, very few of his opponents seem to have the strength to mount a significant challenge to him.

Yet, despite all that, there’s a lot of uneasiness on the Republican side. Very few Republicans actively wish Giuliani to gain the nomination. Outside of the neoconservatives, there are a lot of people who are praying for anyone but him to win the nomination. Yet he still leads by a wide margin in the polls. How can a candidate who generates such little excitement, and who is anathema to the social conservatives and the libertarians in the Republican base, lead the race?

Well, much like the relative obscurity of Ron Paul in major national polls, the “popularity” of Giuliani may simply be that nobody knows him beyond his service as the mayor of New York under 9/11. In fact, I was surprised to find that many in the Republican base know very little about him:

Some of these social conservatives are nonetheless so appalled by Mr Giuliani that they threaten to back a third-party candidate if he wins the Republican nomination. Others think that would be foolish, since it would virtually guarantee victory for the Democrats. But many Republicans fall into a third category—they are simply unaware that Mr Giuliani is socially liberal. A recent Gallup poll found that only 37% knew he was pro-choice and only 18% knew he favoured civil unions for gays. This makes the race for the Republican nomination extremely hard to predict. As the primaries draw near, will voters learn more about Mr Giuliani and reject him? … Civil libertarians, too, distrust Mr Giuliani. He is worryingly vague as to what constitutes torture. He tried unsuccessfully to stay on as mayor beyond his term limit, citing the emergency of September 11th 2001. Washington Monthly, a Beltway journal, predicts—on the evidence of his record in New York—that if Mr Giuliani were elected president he would grab even more executive power than Mr Bush has.

I increasingly believe that the Republican primaries are going to be a lot more exciting than many are currently predicting. Republican voters may currently have Giuliani sitting in first place, but I think quite a large number of them do so not because they admire his policies, but because they don’t know anything about him or any other candidates.

Ron Paul appears to be catching the hearts and minds of the civil libertarians, and although he’s not polling well, he’s bringing in money. Mike Huckabee– the evolution non-believer that he is– seems to be collecting the social conservatives, and while he’s got very little money, he’s polling better than expected. Might it be that as we approach the primaries, we begin to see a mass flight away from Giuliani, as the Republican party fractures between the neocons, libertarians, and social conservatives?

I see the potential for some major fireworks, and the time might have finally arrived where the Republican party has to have some debates about what it is and what it stands for.

Does that mean that I’ll predict a Giuliani defeat? It’s possible, but a lack of excitement doesn’t preclude him from winning the nomination. Nobody liked or was excited by John Kerry in 2004, but he got the nod simply because it was expected that he was the most “electable”. It may be that Giuliani squeaks through because Republicans think he’s the only one that has the power to stand up to Hillary, but I think that is misguided. If Republicans are forced only to vote against something, I don’t see the necessary numbers making it to the polls to stand a chance. I, for one, would rather stay home that vote for Giuliani, even if it means that Hillary will win. And if Republicans can’t come to enough of a consensus to agree on voting for a candidate and platform, perhaps it’s best to take the time in the minority to figure it out.