As recently as the summer, Rudy Giuliani was leading the field in Michigan’s Republican primary. As recently as early December, a Rasmussen poll showed him within two points of first place.
Yesterday, the former mayor finished a distant sixth, with a pathetic 2.8% of the vote. Consider this: Giuliani not only had well under half of Ron Paul’s support, he finished with a similar vote total to Dennis Kucinich — who was running in an uncontested primary and making no effort to actually win votes. Ouch.
It naturally came as no surprise, then, when I saw this CNN headline: “Romney win may give a boost to Giuliani’s White House bid.” Yes, it appears bad news is good news for Rudy.
Mitt Romney’s win in his native state of Michigan appears to be good news for Rudy Giuliani’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination.
The former New York mayor is spending most of his time and most of his money campaigning in Florida, which votes January 29. The Giuliani campaign’s strategy has been to de-emphasize early votes and instead concentrate on Florida and the coast-to-coast primaries which follow on February 5.
That strategy only has a chance of success if there’s no clear Republican front-runner heading into the Florida primary. Romney’s defeat of Sen. John McCain of Arizona means that three different candidates have now won the first three major contests of the race — leaving the front-runner mantle up for grabs.
Giuliani’s campaign put out a statement Tuesday night congratulating the former Massachusetts governor on his win, adding that “he race remains fluid and competitive, [and] our strategy remains on track.”
Yes, of course, right “on track.” In Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan, Giuliani was, at one time, the leading candidate, and yet he nevertheless failed miserably in every contest. All of this is evidence, Giuliani and the media tell us, of a campaign that is right where it wants to be.
Indeed, television viewers apparently heard quite a bit of this very silly spin. Ari Fleischer proclaimed last night that the results in Michigan were “great news for Rudy.” Gloria Borger, a prominent media personality, added that this is “just the scenario he wants.”
Giuliani told Fox News:
“Am I nervous at all? Do I look nervous? (I am) having a great time. This is a strategy we selected — it is the only strategy that can work for us and it’s a good one.”
Let’s see, Giuliani went from first to sixth in Iowa, first to fourth in New Hampshire, and first to sixth in Michigan. He’s tanking in South Carolina, he’s slipping in Florida, he’s losing to McCain in New York, and he’s blown a 26-point lead in New Jersey, where he’s now polling in single digits. All the while, his campaign has so little money that his senior aides aren’t even going to get paid in January. This is a strategy Giuliani and his team “selected” — as if the master plan included a series of humiliating defeats.
Looking at this landscape, the usually-reasonable Chris Cillizza explained yesterday that Giuliani is “still very much in it.”
[W]e can’t help but think the way the GOP nomination fight has played out so far leaves open a scenario whereby Giuliani can still win the nomination. The Fix is not arguing that Giuliani WILL win the nomination; rather, for all of the ink spilled about the decline of Hizzoner’s campaign, there still remains a reasonable path for Giuliani to wind up as the Republican standard-bearer. […]
The truth of the matter is that the fundamentals that Giuliani needed to be in place to have a chance at the nomination remain.
Look, I understand the scenario. There’s no obvious GOP frontrunner, which means all the half-way coherent candidates in the field still have a shot. Presumably, that includes Giuliani, who might even manage to eke out a win in Florida. It’s been a strange year; maybe there’s some merit hiding somewhere in this “strategy.”
But I really doubt it. And seeing the media talk up Giuliani’s chances are constant and repeated failures is getting a little grating.