Trailhead: A campaign blog.

Death Watch: Rudy Giuliani

Over the last few weeks we’ve been trying to calculate the candidates’ expiration dates in our Death Watch series. Tonight, two candidates are in jeopardy. We pay our pre-mortem respects to Mr. Giuliani below. See Mike Huckabee’s Death Watch here.

It may not look like it, but Rudy waged a good campaign. He was a solid debater, energetic and dogged on the stump, and was on-message most of the time. But then things soured on two fronts:

1. The message: When Rudy was living it up front-runner-style, life was good. His national polls were up in the 40s, the money was rolling in, and with Clinton leading nationally, name-recognition seemed to be the overriding narrative of this election. But once voters actually listened to what Giuliani was saying, the poll numbers sagged. If Rudy’s failure has told us anything, it’s that most Americans just aren’t afraid anymore. Giuliani spread the they’re-going-to-get-us gospel very successfully, but New Hampshire voters in particular just didn’t buy it. When that happened, Giuliani pulled out of New Hampshire—he had already pulled out of the rest—and went to Florida to try his luck there. It seems they don’t want a 9/11 candidate either.
2. The primary calendar: Originally, Giuliani’s camp thought that the compressed schedule would help them lay low for a month and then reemerge with a head-start in Florida and a natural constituency in a handful of Feb. 5 states. But they waited one primary too long. In hindsight, Rudy Giuliani needed to win South Carolina just as badly as Fred Thompson did. The only problem: Rudy didn’t have a shot in hell, and he knew it. So he pushed his last stand back to Florida, where he could schmooze with Yankee fans and talk about NASCAR all day. But by the time today’s ballot rolled around, the party coalesced around two guys they don’t really like, but whom they like more than the pro-choice, baseball-polygamist, drag-king Giuliani. 

Rudy has intimated that he’ll flee the scene after what’s probably going to be a bloody affair tonight. His aides say they’ll re-evaluate the campaign’s status Wednesday morning, but he’ll probably drop out to avoid embarrassment in the Northeast, where John McCain has eclipsed him recently. There isn’t much chance Rudy will stay in; run a regional Feb. 5 campaign in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut; and wreak utter havoc. He’s buddies with McCain, who stuck up for him at the last debate, and wouldn’t want to do anything to help Mitt Romney win the nomination.

So, after tonight, Rudy’s campaign will probably become a mere memory from the 2008 election. This morning, while flying out of Washington, D.C., a newsstand in the airport was selling candidate-themed t-shirts. There was Rudy, staring at me with the White House behind him. I laughed as I realized that this t-shirt was as close as he was ever going to get.

Michigan: Giuliani vs. Thompson

A number hidden at the bottom of the returns: Fred Thompson is beating Rudy Giuliani in Michigan by nearly 3,000 votes. This matters not because Thompson is beating Giuliani, but because Giuliani is losing to Thompson.

Rudy Giuliani used to be a peculiar kind of national frontrunner—a guy who performed poorly in the early-primary states but who did well nationally because of name recognition. Part of Giuliani's problem was that the more he campaigned and advertised in states, the less that people wanted to vote for him. For a while, Rudy was better off staying in the national headlines but off the campaign trail.

Well, it's clear that that's not possible any more. Giuliani stayed as far away from Michigan as possible, and he's paying the price. (Due to his own strategy, his headlines have been insulated inside of Florida.) But that's not Giuliani's problem. The real issue is that Thompson has done the same, and he's still beating Giuliani.

Even if Giuliani comes back to recapture momentum after a win in Florida, the Michigan result calls into question the strength of his candidacy. Without momentum, he's worse than Fred Thompson. With momentum, can he be much better?

MSNBC Just Called Rudy Giuliani "Second-Tier"

Drop the Ball

While attending the final Nextel Cup race in Florida yesterday, Rudy Giuliani was asked to comment on the news that his beloved Yankees were close to re-signing Alex Rodriguez: "‘I'm glad to see as an American League fan, as a Yankees fan, we're keeping him in the American League, we're keeping him on the Yankees,' he said."

As the Washington Post pointed out, Giuliani made sure to say that he was an American League fan before he was a Yankees fan—an allusion to his heretical claim in October that he would be rooting for the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. At the time, commentators chalked up his pro-AL stance to political pandering. (He said it in New Hampshire, after all.) Giuliani, it seemed, thought that voters turn out for candidates who echo their sporting allegiances.

But if that's the case, Giuliani should quit talking about the AL and stick to hyping his newfound NASCAR passion. For one thing, in early Southern primary states like South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, the National League reigns supreme. One look at this map of baseball territories suggests Giuliani risks alienating a whole lot of Braves, Cardinals, Astros fans.

He would be wise to emphasize NASCAR while he's below the Mason-Dixon. Remember, "NASCAR voters" are a coveted demographic in this election for both Republicans and Democrats. Another reason Giuliani should stick with NASCAR: The mainstream press usually doesn't know enough about NASCAR rivalries to make Giuliani choose between Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing. And come to think of it, Jeff Gordon did pump $2,300 into Giuliani's campaign. Ah, but George Steinbrenner pitched in $4,600. Damn Yanks.

(Image via the strange maps blog.)