The campaign for the Republican nomination doesn’t have any clear winners yet. But it does have its obvious losers. Minor candidates like Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo have bowed out, and Fred Thompson’s exit can’t be far off. What we’re all waiting for now is to see whether Jan. 29’s contest in Florida will confirm that Rudy Giuliani has become as irrelevant as Thompson, or give him the shot in the arm he’s hungering for.
But it need not be that way. The current front runners who have worked to capitalize on the calendar’s early votes can make Republican primary goers forget Giuliani if they bypass the state the way that Giuliani has sat out the contests in which they have succeeded. Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee should skip Florida.
The conventional wisdom now says that Florida’s primary will crown a leader heading into Feb. 5’s Super Duper Tuesday and it’s 1000+ delegates. And if you look at the calendars for McCain and Romney, their strategists would appear to agree.
But Florida will do no such thing. Even if Giuliani is defeated by one of his competitors in the Sunshine State, the contest is likely to be a close one. It will be difficult for any of the candidates to claim strong momentum from a decisive victory if they only take the state’s 57 delegates by a few thousand votes.
Instead, a victory in Florida that appears hard won by Giuliani will move him back into the column of seeming viability. And lack of viability for Giuliani’s campaign appears to be confirmed over and over again in recent polls results. While Romney more or less closed up shop in South Carolina, he still received a reasonable share of votes. Giuliani, on the other hand, came in behind Ron Paul once again, showing that all but the zaniest of Republican primary voters think that “America’s mayor” isn’t the right man to lead their party.
Giuliani wants to be out of that column, and he’s setting up Florida as his Waterloo. He’s sort of like an 18-year-old bully with a muscle car. He’ll challenge you to a game of chicken on the outskirts of town late at night to show you up in front of all the other kids in town. And because his car is meaner than yours and he spends every day working on it, he very well could win.
But that victory will only mean a lot if he runs you off the road in front of that big audience. And if you don’t show, and they sit out the game of chicken, too, the bully’s cry of victory sounds pretty hollow.
A collective decision to skip Florida would be a lot like everyone deciding they have something better to do than watch the bully play chicken. It would represent the three leading candidates saying they aren’t willing to play the game as the Giuliani campaign is trying to dictate it. Instead, the candidates could say they were getting ready for the big dance, which won’t come until Feb. 5.
Thus the other Republicans ought to really make Florida a knock-out punch against Giuliani’s campaign. The latest polls seem to indicate that even if Rudy wins, it’s going to be a close one for him. And that’s after the other candidates have done the hard work of winning contests in other states and haven’t spent too much time in Florida. Giuliani achieving a difficult victory against challengers who don’t even bother showing up will complete his transformation into an eccentric irrelevancy who is unproven in other states. By letting him have this one and focusing on the national primary day, Romney, McCain, and Huckabee can spend the next two weeks proving they are nationally palatable to the Republican Party and further thin out their herd.
8 Responses to “How to knock Rudy out of the campaign before Florida”
OMG! BRILLIANT!! I hope to goodness McCain and Romney’s people have thought of this. Because you’re exactly right. And this is so Rudy — the bully wanting everybody to play his game. If they don’t they’ll be one-upping him at his game and they are bound to win doing it. Oh please please pretty please Romney and McCain be so smart. Plus, it would save them tons of money, which McCain needs right now. Let them be as calculating and “strategic” as Rudy.
Michael-you should call the other campaigns and tell them to pull out of Florida and just say ” we never were counting on Florida, this is exactly where we want to be.” Leave Rudy stupified about why nobody came to his party.
I can’t tell you how wrong this “clever” idea is.
Anyway you slice it, by February 6th Rudy will be a player, and probably ahead. New York is winner take all too and he’s ahead in Missouri too, another winner take all state. Add those to Florida and 9iu11ni is already ahead of anyone else.
Stop him in Florida the old fashioned way, by beating him, and he’s done.
won’t happen, and wouldn’t work for a number of reasons. one is florida’s standing in the national race, last i remember people were not counting hanging chads in iowa. second, there are too many rudy-friendly states on super tuesday to forfeit florida to him. a florida win gives him delegates and mo and those are things that his opponents must strip him of going into ny, nj, pa, missouri, illinois, delaware, and california. the last thing they want is any kind of ‘rudy comeback’ stories in the final stretch to super tuesday.
at this point, the only was to prevent rudy from getting big delegates on super tuesday is for mccain to win big in florida, whcih could give him cali, PA, conn, and nj. that would KO rudy. but if huck wins, those states would probably still turn to the guy they have leaned toward the entire time.
seems like florida will be mccain and rudy in the 1, 2 spots, deciding the order is what happens the next 8 days.
hopefully, mitt will finish 4th, proving him to be a joke and shutting hugh hewitt up about silver medal nonsense.
Rudy was a clean candidate. He was the ONLY* one that didn’t exchange verbal abuse with the other candidates. And you democratic liberals get your way, he’s dropping out. I can’t wait for Hillary to get in there and give us all the illusion of free healthcare, 700 a month bills because of it, and leaving us completely open to attack by radicals. Woohoo!
I will miss Rudy, but at least he didn’t run a sour campaign as the last poster highlighted. Although… I would certainly rather not have McCain in office, thats pretty close to electing a democrat on the republican’s side imo.
Something to say?
That is a brilliant idea Michael! If Mittens, Schmuckabee and Ol’ Freddie just say fuck you Rudy, you wouldn’t play ball with us, so why should we play ball with you, and just skip town, 9ui11ani would just be humiliated.
I can picture Rudy now: “Boo hoo, where did everybody go? I feel sad, like September 11th.”
Left by Noah Noah
January 20, 2008 at 8:27pm