Rudy Giuliani is finding out the hard way that there really is no new way to run a campaign. You just don't skip all of the early contests, get locked out of the news cycle for a month, and then ride in on a white horse in Florida, and expect to blow by the competition after that.
Rudy has several core problems that the mainstream media has missed:
1. His last big news cycle was a disaster. The stories about police shuttling his mistress around before she was his wife weren't helpful for a candidate running on little else besides 9/11. Without some larger narrative, Rudy has always run the risk of getting sucked into the sinkhole of his pretty miserable personal story, once the 9/11 zombie juice wore off and the New York-based press started covering him again.
2. There was no next big news cycle. Just as Judygate was dying down, the news became all about the cat fights between Barack and Hillary, and all about the big wins for ... pick the Republican ... Huckabee! Romney! McCain! Nowhere in this media narrative could one find a guy named Rudolph Giuliani. And in politics, voters forget you faster than they forgive you.
3. While nobody was thinking about Rudy, he was busy burning through his scant campaign stash in the Sunshine State. Rudy spent his money in Florida like a drunken tourist on a cruise ship, and now that he's nearly out of cash, and paying his senior staffers with hugs (does Rudy actually hug, or does he just grimace with that skull face of his and pat repeatedly...?) there's no way he can out-gun his rivals where he has telegraphed to the entire world that he is going to make his stand: Florida. Florida is a pricey media market, and without money, he's becoming more uncompetitive by the day. And Super Tuesday is going to cost the candidates a hell of a lot more than Florida.
4. The media is wrong about Rudy's appeal in Florida. Rudy was popular for a minute down here with about a third of Republican voters, not because they're New Yorkers and they love him, but because they're NOT New Yorkers and he's a Republican who's tough on the so-called "war on terror," and Florida Republicans are conservative GWOT hawks. Truth be told, the New Yorkers who have retired down here are largely to be found in places like Broward County (dubbed the "sixth borough" of Manhattan), Palm Beach and Boca Raton -- and earth to media, they're mostly FDR Democrats, who hate Rudy's guts. In fact, I don't know a single New Yorker down here who likes Rudy. And don't get me started on former N.Y. firefighters... Rudy's support in Florida came not from nostalgic New Yorkers, but from hawkish southerners and anti-Castro Cubans. Now, both are walking away from him in favor of John McCain.
5. Rudy Giuliani is a terrible candidate. He is a one-noter, and with the Republicans mind-numbing the rest of us into believing that the surge has worked, combined with an economy headed to recession, Iraq, and the global war on terror, have suddenly gone off the front pages. Once the election shifted squarely toward "the economy, stupid," Rudy suddenly didn't seem so important. After all, he's known for his one day of glory (like the balding 40 year old who's still prattling on about that big, winning touchdown he made in high school to anyone who'll listen...) not for his economic prowess. And no matter what Chris Matthews tells you, Rudy's just not that likable, nor is he that electable without a major terrorism scare factor (something which also makes no sense, since he didn't stop 9/11, or predict 9/11, he merely survived 9/11 ... )
But will he survive past Tuesday?
As they say in Brooklyn, it don't look good...
New polls have Rudy trailing John McCain in New York (gasp! They can't stand him there, either!), New Jersey (where he's down 29-26) and California (where he's also given up a lead). And a new Florida poll shows Sir Rudy of 9/11 falling into ... wait for it ... third place:
Rudy Giuliani has hit the skids in a Florida freefall that could shatter his presidential campaign and leave a two-man Republican contest in the state between John McCain and Mitt Romney, a Miami Herald poll shows.
Despite hovering over Florida voters for weeks, Giuliani is tied for third place with the scarcely visible Mike Huckabee in a statewide poll of 800 likely voters.
With his poll numbers slipping back home in the Northeast, Giuliani's campaign will implode if he can't turn it around in the six days left before Florida's Jan. 29 vote, the final gateway before a blitz of primaries around the nation that could sew up the race.
''He may be running for president, but with these numbers he wouldn't be elected governor of Florida,'' said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, whose firm conducted the survey with Democratic pollsters Schroth, Eldon & Associates for The Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and Bay News 9. Alluding to the timeworn song, Conway added: ``If he can't make it there in Florida, he can't make it anywhere.''
Asked about the 13 percent of the voters who haven't made up their minds, pollster Rob Schroth said he didn't expect them to fuel a Giuliani comeback.
''Giuliani for all intents and purposes has virtually no chance to win in Florida,'' he said.
Well when you've lost Kellyanne Conway... More on the Florida poll:
...the leading Republicans are waging fierce campaigns in Florida, the biggest prize yet of the primary season. McCain is narrowly leading the Republican field with 25 percent of the vote, followed by Romney with 23 percent. The gap is within the poll's margin of error, placing the Arizona senator and the former Massachusetts governor in a statistical tie.
Incidentally, McCain is leading Rudy by 10 points in South Florida, the place where the media would have you believe Rudy is strongest...
Statewide, Giuliani received support from 15 percent, down from 36 percent in a Miami Herald poll in November. The poll was conducted Jan. 20-22, after Fred Thompson came up short in the South Carolina primary but before he quit the race Tuesday afternoon.
Huckabee, a charismatic former Baptist minister, is popular among frequent churchgoers, young voters and residents of the conservative Panhandle of the state, according to the poll. Romney was the second choice for born-again Christians, suggesting that his Mormon religion is not a political liability. His stronghold is the southwest part of the state.
One more quote from Kellyanne Conway deserves mention. It's tucked into this nice little couplet:
''Giuliani has gone from a prohibitive favorite to a second-tier candidate. . . and the drop is traceable to dramatic erosion in South Florida,'' said Tom Eldon, Schroth's pollingpartner.
After retreating from New Hampshire weeks ago, Giuliani's campaign decided to hunker down in Florida and argued that the state would catapult him to the nomination. What the campaign failed to anticipate was that his poll numbers would plunge as rivals picked off smaller states with earlier contests.
''This Giuliani campaign strategy of betting it all on Florida somehow miscalculated how Florida voters would disregard his performance in other states -- it does matter to them if somebody has been a loser,'' Conway said.
''Giuliani's decision to pull out of the early states is going to go down in history,'' Eldon added.
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Tell a friend
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sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
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url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
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%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
