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After weeks on the defensive for his liberal, if wobbly, stand on abortion, Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani awoke Monday to good news: The conservative Club for Growth was promoting a mostly fawning report on his economic record as New York's mayor.

The Giuliani campaign immediately emailed the rave review to the media and potential supporters, and did so again yesterday morning. Last night in a Republican debate in South Carolina, Mr. Giuliani himself highlighted the study. But the good news for Mr. Giuliani may suggest a worrisome prospect for Republicans more broadly. Their current front-runner has the potential to split the social and economic conservatives who have constituted the Republican Party's base since Ronald Reagan united them a quarter-century ago.

"If the party nominates a social liberal like Giuliani, there's not only the potential, but there's an inevitability of a split," says John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, a politically active social-conservative group. "Republicans will learn if that happens, they're going to a pay a price for nominating a social liberal" -- by losing the White House in 2008 if social conservatives sit out the election.

On that, some conservatives who focus on economic issues would agree. "There is a danger," says former Republican Rep. Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, a hard-line antitax group. "There has been a very constructive alliance" of social and economic conservatives, "and it's hard to imagine cobbling together a majority of Americans without reaching both. But a guy like Mayor Giuliani might be able to secure the nomination without the support of social conservatives."

Some party strategists -- and certainly Mr. Giuliani's camp -- share that view. They argue that the former mayor's post-9/11 identification with the third pillar of the Republican base, national security, along with his fiscal record in heavily Democratic New York City, could persuade conservatives to give him a pass on social issues.

In the general election, they add, Mr. Giuliani could be the most electable Republican because his support of abortion rights, gun control and gay couples' civil unions could appeal to independents and moderate Republicans. Many of those voters abandoned the party in last fall's elections, believing it has become too beholden to the religious right.

"Social conservatives, just like everyone else, make decisions about who they're going to vote for based on a basket of issues, not a single issue," says Jim Dyke, a senior Giuliani adviser. They "also care about crime and what he did in New York City" -- where the crime rate dropped and the economy hummed during his tenure -- and his leadership after the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

At the Family Research Council, one of the most prominent Christian conservative groups, president Tony Perkins isn't buying it, saying, "It sounds as if the economic side of the family is serving us divorce papers." He says of the economic, social and national-security conservatives who are the three legs of the Republican base: "If one is missing, you have a two-legged stool. And try sitting on that."

Such conservatives bristle that party officials and pundits are patronizing them, with admonitions to stifle their moral objections in the interest of an inclusive party -- and victory in November 2008. Mr. Perkins says Christian conservatives share with "the conservative family" a belief in economic principles such as low taxes, spending and free trade -- "but we don't share them at the expense of our core social values."

And after years in which Republicans have drawn people into the party with its stands against abortion and gay marriage, "the idea that social conservatives...would all of a sudden wake up and say, 'Those things don't matter,' well, it's just not going to happen."

Some social conservatives also are troubled by Mr. Giuliani's personal story, which features three marriages, a bitter second divorce and estrangement from his children. Mr. Stemberger says that profile suggests "an immoral man."

For months, Mr. Giuliani tried to reassure religious conservatives with promises to appoint "strict constructionist" federal judges -- to conservatives, a code phrase for judges hostile to abortion rights, among other things. That worked to persuade some. But various Giuliani statements, such as his vacillation in a debate among presidential hopefuls this month -- that it would be "OK" if the Supreme Court struck down the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, and "OK" if it didn't -- undercut any headway.

A speech last week at the Houston Baptist College signaled a changed strategy. Mr. Giuliani unapologetically endorsed abortion rights, challenging social conservatives both to be open to his candidacy and perhaps even reward him for honesty. "When people of good faith...come to different conclusions about this, about something so very, very personal, I believe you have to respect their viewpoint," he said.

The problem for social conservatives is no Republican top-tier candidate excites them. Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney draw suspicion. Many of these voters like Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, but fear such a dark horse can't win.

Against that backdrop, the Club for Growth report was most welcome in the Giuliani camp. The club previously issued critical reports on Messrs. McCain and Huckabee, and a generally favorable one for Mr. Brownback. Mr. Toomey said its Romney report will find a "mixed" record. The Giuliani paper, in contrast, read like an endorsement.

Mr. Giuliani cut New York City's taxes, spending and regulations, privatized services, overhauled welfare and espoused private-school vouchers, the club concluded, despite the city's powerful unions, media, liberal activists and an overwhelmingly Democratic council. "In the face of such tremendous headwind, Giuliani's fiscal accomplishments are remarkable," it said.

Yet the details of the report provide grist for economic critics as well. The club credits Mr. Giuliani for cuts in both a commercial rent tax and a personal income-tax surcharge. But at other times he opposed the liberal council's bids to repeal both taxes, in part because he preferred to spend the revenue on a baseball stadium. He opposed a state income-tax cut and a national flat tax, filed the lawsuit that succeeded in getting a federal line-item veto declared unconstitutional, opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement and, in the club's words, showed "an alarming propensity for doling out corporate welfare to select companies."

Says Mr. Toomey: "The good outweighed the bad."