DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Rudy Giuliani sped across the finish line in Florida on Monday.

He didn’t get the checkered flag he really wanted – victory in the Jan. 29 Republican primary – but had a great time all the same.

Giuliani’s campaign bus took a detour from its two-day, eight-stop tour of Florida for a visit to the Daytona International Speedway. Aides assembled the press traveling with him in the grassy infield, setting up the camera shot they wanted – pictures of his giant “Florida is Rudy Country” bus tearing around the track and across the black-and-white finish line.

The big coach roared past the media pack, not at race speeds but fast enough to keep from tipping over on the banked track. Giuliani grinned in the front passenger seat.

No one was in the stands…

This does seem fitting, as a new ARG poll came out today showing Rudy Giuliani in fourth place in Florida with poll voters (though tied for first with absentees) and fourth place overall.

As Political Derby.com illustrates quite nicely, Ron Paul now has a better chance of becoming president than Rudy Giuliani.

(Cross posted at The November Blog)

And here’s a campaign ad from his first senate race featuring the truck:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shucks. How can you not vote for an ol’ fella who drives a nifty ol’ truck like that?

Only, he didn’t really drive the truck as much as he’d like you to believe. Back in May, Ol’ Kevin Drum unearthed a gem from Washington Monthly’s Michelle Cottle, discussing her experience with the ol’ pickup at a Fred Thompson campaign event in Tennessee in 1996:

Seated in the audience is a childhood friend of mine….My friend stands talking with her colleagues as the senator is driven away [in the pickup] by a blond, all-American staffer. A few minutes later, my friend gets into her car to head home. As she pulls up to the stop sign at the parking lot exit, rolling up to the intersection is Senator Thompson, now behind the wheel of a sweet silver luxury sedan. He gives my friend a slight nod as he drives past. Turning onto the main road, my friend passes the school’s small, side parking area. Lo and behold: There sits the abandoned red pickup, along with the all-American staffer.

Well, shucks, Ol’ Freddie, I guess you done fooled us once, but hopefully this time we’ll… uh…we’ll…uh…heck, what’s that ol’ sayin’ in Tennessee?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Right.

(Cross-posted at The November Blog)

You can watch the debate on t.v. or on Foxnews.com’s live stream.

Stephen Green speaks for most wingnut bloggers who are actually contemptible of “regular people,” calling Iowans “corn-sucking idiots” for picking the non-millionaire.

The National Review is imploding, as Tagg Romney sees his inheritance go to some ad sales director in Des Moines with nothing to show for it.

Fred Thompson is resting, and offered this STIRRING oratory:

“It looks like somebody is going to need to carry a strong, consistent, conservative message — and it looks like it ought to be me.”

It’s not a good day to be a member of The Right’s Field. (But it’s good news for John McCain, because as we know, everything is good news for John McCain.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Rudy will skip caucus night, hoping that the firefighters don’t look for him in Florida, and that nobody will take notice of his potential 6th-place finish in the Hawkeye State.

But don’t worry! They have a great plan to win the nomination, based on not imitating those other losers who… won their nominations and the Presidency…

As voting nears in the Republican nomination process, our campaign remains convinced that our strategy we have long had in place is right – bold, innovative and designed to deal with the radically different election calendar. While many of the beltway insiders seem to remain committed to the old “Carter/Clinton” approach and have questioned the adjustments we have made to our strategic thinking based on the new calendar, we clearly have a winning plan to secure the nomination in an election cycle unlike any other. History will prove us right.

President Carter? President Clinton? What do they know about becoming President?

I know it’s not the flu because I haven’t had fever since the first day. I do know one thing: “flu-like symptoms” don’t put you in the hospital unless you’re pretty damned sick, and if you’re that damned sick, you’re not out the next day “feeling great”.

But then, I’m not Rudy Giuliani:

A day after “flu-like symptoms” led him to turn his airplane in mid-air and seek medical attention, Rudolph W. Giuliani smiled and said he felt “great” as he walked out of a hospital here Thursday afternoon. But his campaign provided few details of what had caused the problem that led him to spend more than 14 hours in the hospital.

Mr. Giuliani was admitted to Barnes-Jewish Hospital here on Wednesday night after he fell ill on a campaign swing through Missouri. His aides said that he had felt increasingly ill as the day went on, and that after his plane left for New York he experienced such a severe headache and flu-like symptoms that the plane returned to Missouri.

After spending the night in the hospital, and being given a series of tests, Mr. Giuliani walked out shortly before 3 p.m. “I’m feeling fine, thanks to the hospital,” Mr. Giuliani, clad in a dark suit and a blue necktie but no overcoat, told reporters.

Just what had ailed Mr. Giuliani was unclear. His communications director, Katie Levinson, said he had been given “a clean bill of health” before he left the hospital. “Doctors performed a series of precautionary tests and the results of all the tests were normal,” Ms. Levinson said in a statement.

The campaign declined to elaborate on what his symptoms were or to specify which tests were performed. Hospital officials said the campaign had asked them not to provide any information about Mr. Giuliani’s health and to refer questions to the campaign.

Jake Tapper similarly wonders about how one can be so sick as to be hospitalized one day and just fine the next:

What was wrong? What tests did he get? What was causing such severe pains? Giuliani gave no details.

His campaign will not release any concrete medical information to the press — raising questions about the former New York mayor’s health and the transparency of his campaign.

Giuliani was experiencing headache pain so severe Wednesday night he had his charter plane turn around and go back to St. Louis and was rushed to the emergency room.

His campaign shared no concrete medical information about which tests the mayor undertook and what the exact results were, also refraining from allowing the media to see his medical records or speak to his doctors.

A senior Giuliani campaign official told ABC News, “He’s fine. He campaigns very vigorously. He did 77 events in 53 cities this month. He just got sick.”

The former mayor was all smiles for the cameras as he left Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis Thursday afternoon after spending the night and the better part of a day in a Missouri hospital.

“I feel great. Take care. Merry Christmas, I’m feeling fine, thanks to the hospital. They did a great job,” Giuliani said, refusing to answer any reporters’ questions as he left the hospital.

Now this bug that I’ve been battling had as part of its early stages a constant band of headache around the back of my head, which at its peak had me awakening in the middle of the night with pounding head pain. But I wasn’t hospitalized.

I know that Saint Rudy of 9/11 believes that everything about him is his own personal business — his marital and extramarital affairs, his client list, his business dealings, and now his health. But if he wants to be president, he’d better get used to the fact that the health of the guy who may have to make split-second decisions for the entire country IS the people’s business, not just his own. And if he can’t deal with that, then let him withdraw from the race and go back to private life where no one will care about his health.

(cross-posted at Brilliant at Breakfast)

Giuliani is moving resources (read $$$) out of the New Hampshire media market.

Giuliani scaled way back on his TV buys on Boston stations for this week compared to last week [...]

In the case of Boston TV however, records confirm Giuliani’s team purchased one large number of TV spots and then trimmed it back or canceled it six days later.

This could be part of a strategy to shift more ad money to Florida, where some polls show his large lead slipping, or to Michigan, which votes a week after New Hampshire and is Romney’s birth state.

An attempt to reach the Giuliani campaign for comment was unsuccessful.

Giuliani is attempting the first “gain momentum by losing every primary” tactic.

(Thanks, Greg.)

And stock in Pfizer, which owns Viagra, surges in after hours trading!

Here are a few of the other favorite things of our Republican hopefuls:

REPUBLICANS:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “My grandfather’s pocket watch.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: “Probably my Tobias bass guitar or maybe, I’ve got a handmade musket rifle that was made by a guy in Eureka Springs, Ark. I’ve hunted turkey with it. It’s really an amazing firearm. Probably one of those two as far as just real heirlooms.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain: “I have a baseball signed by Ted Williams, my childhood hero, a Marine pilot as well.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: 1962 Rambler American, which his sons bought for him. “The last year that my dad was president of American Motors and made Ramblers was 1962, so it’s a connection with my dad and that era.”

Here’s your man Mitt’s favorite car:

Brings to mind that “boxy but good” joke from the movie Crazy People.

Or maybe that ought to be the campaign’s new slogan: “Drive back to simpler times before many inferior American brands were out of business. Vote Mitt Romney.”

But ultimately, you just need to imagine a dog in a carrier strapped to the top of the thing to complete the picture.

Note especially the slo-mo sleeve-rolling, which is as much proof as anyone could possibly need that this is a go-getting go-getter who gets on the go and, um, go-gets.

That really is priceless. Who needs a record when you can make a perfect crease on a pressed white shirt and roll it up to the elbow? I fully expect the next ad to be ALL sleeve-rolling. It’s simply too powerful to rebut.