It will be fending off a social-conservative third party that might run an anti-abortion candidate like Gary Bauer just to make a point.
However, they are understood and embraced by Tea Party and social conservative votes.
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Unlike the vast majority of his fellow campaigners, he is also well to the right of the Conservative Party on social and moral issues.
The obvious question all along has been what happens when the field winnows down to Romney, the irrepressible Ron Paul and a lone Tea Party and social conservative candidate.
The "X" factor with Ridge is likely to be the reaction of the GOP's pro-life base: Ridge is famously pro-choice, and his selection would risk upheaval among the party's social conservative wing.
Mr Cameron enables the party to take conservative positions on social and cultural issues without sounding censorious.
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It is made up of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPOe) and the conservative People's Party, whose previous coalition collapsed during the summer.
The only credible threat to this centrist block might come from the possible creation of a jihadi party made up of former anti-Soviet guerrillas with conservative social views, bankrolled by Tajiks and headed by a sellable Pushtun.
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Such ideas bring yelps of disgust from conservative Christian Democrats and their party's Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union.
But if he has to depend on the support of the tiny Family First party, the price might be moves towards a divisive, conservative social agenda.
Although he generally supports the conservative Republican line, he splits from the party's base on social issues: He advocates some forms of gun control, has supported the legal right to gay marriage and is pro-choice.
He leads the conservative People's Party, the junior partner with Mr Klima's Social Democrat Party in a coalition government.
Mr Guttenberg is a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).
Mr Guttenberg, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) - the Bavarian sister party of Mrs Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) - was also stripped of his PhD by the University of Bayreuth last year after evidence of his plagiarism emerged.
The new president's backers are a heterogeneous coalition of the conservative Social Christians, the Democratic Left and Pachakutik, a left-wing Andean-Indian party.
He is a charismatic check-the-box candidate -- a social conservative and a fiscal conservative, a pro-business Southern governor beloved by both evangelicals and the tea party.
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