The reason presidential campaigns focus so much energy, attention, and resources on the early primary states is painfully obvious. No one needs a PhD in poli sci to know that winning early contests gives successful candidates everything they want and need to propel their campaigns (positive media attention, money, momentum), while candidates who falter in the initial primaries and caucuses start to hear “When are you going to drop out?” quite a bit.
But Rudy Giuliani’s campaign apparently believes it can succeed where everyone else has failed. TNR’s Noam Scheiber reports:
I just got off a conference call with Giuliani campaign manager Mike DuHaime and strategist Brent Seaborn, the upshot of which (according to them) was that Giuliani could come out of the first 3-4 states without a single win and still have a relatively clear path to the nomination. The thinking hinges on the 57 winner-take-all votes available in Florida on January 29, where Giuliani has a comfortable lead, and the more than 200 winner-take-all votes available in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware on February 5. Much was also made of Giuliani’s commanding (nearly two-to-one) lead in the national polls.
All in all, it sounded like a concession that Giuliani is not going to do very well in the first few contests, an outcome the campaign was understandably at pains to minimize. Hence the promise of February 5. Though DuHaime said the campaign hadn’t reconciled itself to a “February 5th strategy,” as Joseph Curl of The Washington Times pointed out, it pretty much sounded like one in practice.
Let me get this straight — the Giuliani campaign is prepared to lose Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, and then make a valiant comeback to claim the nomination?
I really don’t think so, and the fact that Team Giuliani is publicly speculating about the merit of the plan suggests the campaign is in big trouble.
This problem is exacerbated if Mitt Romney goes 3-for-3 in those same early contests. He has a sizable lead in Iowa and a double-digit lead in New Hampshire. Giuliani was leading in South Carolina, but now he’s dropping quickly, while Romney and Fred Thompson are on the upswing.
The thing about losing repeatedly is that one starts to look like a loser. That’s particularly true if an assumed frontrunner can’t actually win when people start voting.
But, Giuliani staffers say, what about all the national polls that show the former mayor in the lead? Well, what about them? National polls can change on a dime, which is why they’re interesting for showing broader trends, but hold almost no predictive value. John Kerry was hurting badly in the national polls until Dems nationwide saw him on their front pages winning big in Iowa and New Hampshire. Wouldn’t you know it, his standing in the national polls quickly skyrocketed.
But how can Romney, with minimal national name recognition, catch up after Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina? It’s not that complicated.
If Romney wins three or more of the first four primary contests, it’s hard to see him losing in Florida, at which point the math starts to get tough for Giuliani. Sure, Rudy has a solid base in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, but that may be moot by that point, since national momentum will probably boost Romney in many of the non-Northeastern states the Giuliani camp currently points to, like California, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio.
Of course, the Giuliani campaign knows all of this, as do McCain, Thompson, and the rest of the GOP field. It’s why I expect the Republican attack dogs to go after Romney with a vengeance in the next few weeks — because if he runs the table in the first three, there may not be another chance to stop him from getting the nomination.