Take It Away
Many have been questioning Giuliani's strategy, and they're looking correct. He was counting on Florida as a firewall, but if you don't play, you can't win. While the polls are close, Giuliani's been in free fall for the past few weeks and both Romney and McCain have a goood chance of beating him there. (Even Huckabee might.)
Not that his strategy was completely nuts. He looked at Iowa and New Hampshire and thought he wouldn't play there, so figured he'd let others fight it out and, still fresh, take them on later.
Oddly, though, there's another thing that looked in his favor a month ago that now might work against him. He probably figured he'd at least take New York and New Jersey on February 5th, and probably Connecticut and California. Since the first three are winner-take-all, and the last winner-take-all by district, this seemed guaranteed to give Giuliani a huge number of delegates, making him a player no matter what.
But, predictably, when you fade, you fade all over. If Giuliani doesn't win in Florida, and worse, finishes a weak third, more voters are likely to desert him and he may not even win his own state. He could have survived in a three or four way race if there were proportional delegates in these states, but if he gets a bunch of goose eggs on Super Tuesday, he really is finished.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:31 AM
4 Comments:
Some pundit on TV suggested that Giuliani's fundamental problem is that McCain is now one of the frontrunners. Giuliani's natural constituency is Republicans who want a prez that will be tough on defense and national security. McCain, to a large degree, has exactly that image.
So the Republicans who care most about national security will gladly vote for either McCain or Giuliani -- which means, in practice, they will vote for whichever of the two of them is ahead.
If he's right, then Giuliani might have been able to win Florida if the earlier primaries and caucuses had put Romney, Huckabee, and/or Thompson in the lead.
I think this seems plausible. Their economic policies and social policies are not the same, but Giuliani's natural constituency cares less about economic and social issues, and more about foreign policy and "America being tough and not being a victim".
I think you're essentially correct. Giuliani was far ahead in all the polls a month or so ago, and McCain nowhere. Rudy looked at Iowa, and thought his lack of social conservative credentials would hurt him, and at New Hampshire, and figured it was Romney country. He took a chance (a bigger chance than he knew) that he could sit out the early ones and coast to an easy victure in Florida where he was way out in front and had a natural constituency. This win would jumpstart his campaign. Along with this, he believed, reasonably, that his main competition would be Romney and some social conservative, probably Thompson (though it turned out to be Huckabee). McCain's success seems to have sunk him. If McCain weren't a factor, and no one thought he would be two months ago, Giuliani would have an excellent chance at Florida and would almost certainly take New York and New Jersey.
A combination of not playing and thus not being in the news early and having the what news there was being negative (indictment of Kerik, city funds for girlfriend police detail, firefighters undercutting his 911 image) has not helped. He has also seemed very un-Rudylike in his public appearances. I think he's a wounded duck falling to earth but this race has had enough surprises that he still might have some impact- even Fred T. 's swan song helped to undercut Huckabee.
I don't think the negative news you refer to had any effect on the race. In fact, it would have been better if people were more aware of any Rudy news, good or bad. Instead, they simply forgot about him. It is rather silly, and his not running earlier shouldn't have made a difference, but apparently it did.
I'm not sure how Fred Thompson leaving had any effect on anyone. I'm sure it had some small effect, but I don't see where. Most people would have guessed he was getting his votes from Huckabee's crowd, except that people aren't always so ideological, and the votes split in odd ways in this race.
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