Monday, January 21, 2008

RUDY GIULIANI

The Road Ahead For Giuliani

A reader or two think I'm nuts for suggesting Giuliani is still okay if he loses Florida, if it's close.

If Giuliani loses, say, 30 percent to 31 percent to McCain, he's viable. Yes, I realize some recent polls have him down in his Feb. 5 trifecta - New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, but I think that's a short-lived McCain bump. By winning South Carolina, McCain is ensured another week of his flaws being described by Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, etc.

Giuliani should get a decent number of California's delegates, maybe Delaware's, probably a chunk of Illinois'. Then the following week, another chunk of Maryland and the District of Columbia's. You figure he's got a shot at the Feb. 19 Republican primaries, Wisconsin & Washington State. Five days later, Puerto Rico. On March 4, he should play well in three of the five — Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont.
 
His road to the nomination is extremely hard. His road to having a big pile of delegates at the convention to barter with is fairly easy.

A reader raised Rudy's anemic 2 percent in South Carolina finish as a sign that the buzzards are circling. But we've seen a simple phenomenon this cycle: If you compete hard in a state, you do at least okay; if you give any sense of skipping over the state, you're lucky to beat Ron Paul. Thompson campaigned hardest in Iowa and South Carolina, and those were his best finishes. Romney "skipped out" of South Carolina with only a few days to go, and was punished with fourth place. Huckabee gave Michigan a half-effort before shifting to South Carolina, and had a disappointingly distant third. Nobody pushed as hard in Nevada as Romney, and he walked away with the state. In this environment, where Giuliani hasn't gone all-out in any of the early states, we shouldn't be surprised.

Also note that in the final days before each contest, the undecideds have tended to shift to the top two candidates. We'll probably see the same phenomenon in Florida - a fairly close fight between numbers one and two, and three, four and five pretty far behind them.

01/21 12:46 PMShare