Pity the Republicans

The Republican presidential candidates are facing some challenges as Matthew Yglesiaspoints out:

Exerpt:

On the Republican side, by contrast, things are a bit of a joke. You'd think a fairly normal conservative Republican would win the Republican nomination. But it hasn't been possible for any normal conservative Republicans to get famous under the Bush shadow, except for Bush's brother Jeb who, it seems, can't run because he's the incumbent's brother. Instead, we're left with the Terrible Troika of Romney, Giuliani, and McCain.

It's a crew so bizarre you're inclined to think that none of them could possibly win the nomination. Giuliani's pro-choice and pro-gay views are fairly well-known at this point. To some extent, however, this only scratches the surface of his un-nominability. Compatible with both his record as a social liberal and his record as an authoritarian, Giuliani was a supporter of New York City's draconian gun laws. Moreover, he was an enthusiastic enforcer of these laws. The ugly truth is that the ex-mayor's record of tension with African-American New Yorkers is probably an asset in a GOP primary. But it's important to note that one major locus of these tensions was the Giuliani-era NYPD's affection for the combined NAACP/NRA nightmare of frequent, random, seemingly racially targeted stop-and-frisk searches of citizens not under suspicion of a specific crime in hopes of finding guns to confiscate.