Rudy Giuliani’s “strategy” (I use the word loosely) of blowing off all of the early contests and betting the farm on Florida was always a rather transparent sham. He tried to compete in Iowa, but voters rejected him en masse. He campaigned heavily in New Hampshire, and found the same result. It was only then, out of desperation, that Giuliani’s team came up with a post-hoc rationalization for failure — “We meant to lose in those other states, because Florida is the key to winning the nomination.”
Last night, the charade came to an end, and Giuliani came in a distant third. Today, he’ll end his campaign and endorse John McCain.
Rudy Giuliani will board a plane to California on Wednesday morning, as planned. But, sources tell ABC News, once there, instead of participating in the GOP debate, he will drop out of the presidential race and endorse Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. […]
Negotiations between the two campaigns had been ongoing as Florida returns came in, with ABC News and other organizations projecting a McCain win in the Sunshine State.
“We ran a campaign that was uplifting,” Giuliani said, not officially leaving the race but speaking in the past tense.
Giuliani’s failure in Florida hardly comes as a surprise. The WaPo’s Dana Milbank wrote a very amusing item the other day, after following Giuliani and actor Jon Voight as they campaigned together in Florida. In a humiliating turn of events, at one event after another, reporters covering the campaign outnumbered voters who turned up to hear the former mayor speak. (At an event in St. Petersburg, 120 people showed up — a number “appropriate for a city council race.”)
At one Florida rally, Giuliani found a crowd that “would fit in a living room.” Voight said, “This is great! This is like the Beatles or something.”
Yes, it literally took a professional actor to make it seem as if Giuliani were a credible presidential candidate.
For a few days, I’ve been trying to think of the appropriate campaign analogy for Giuliani. Kevin suggested the other day that Phil Gramm might work, but I think Brendan Nyhan found an even better one: “Rudy is the Joe Lieberman of 2008 — his name recognition led to strong early numbers in national polling, but he’s just fundamentally unacceptable to the base.”
Precisely. I continue to be surprised that the media is marveling at Giuliani’s “historic collapse,” going from frontrunner to loser in a few short months.
The reality is Giuliani’s position as a credible candidate was a mirage from the start. He started high, thanks to an unearned 9/11 halo and high name recognition, but fell once voters actually got to know him. John Dickerson noted, “The more he campaigned, the more he went down in the polls.”
Following up on an item from last week, Giuliani’s collapse was inevitable and unavoidable. (I’m not just saying this now; I wrote the same thing more than 11 months ago.) When Giuliani was still riding high last summer and early fall, most Republican voters, especially in the early voting states, had no idea he supported abortion rights, gay rights, gun control, stem-cell research, liberal immigration policies, Mario Cuomo’s gubernatorial campaign, and is a thrice-married serial adulterer estranged from his own children. Some pundits, who saw Giuliani as a credible frontrunner for the GOP nomination, said, “None of that matters because he has a 9/11 halo.” The rest of us said, “Wait.”
By the beginning of, say, 2006, both Giuliani and Mitt Romney were in the same boat — moderate Republicans in a conservative party preparing to seek votes from a far-right base. Romney decided to reinvent himself; Giuliani decided he’d repeat “9/11″ over and over again and hope no one notices his record or beliefs. Romney got pretty far with his approach; Giuliani embarrassed himself with his.
He could have run the perfect campaign, giving perfect speeches, hiring perfect aides, and airing perfect ads, but it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. Once GOP voters learned who Giuliani was, he never stood a chance.
At this point, I assume Giuliani will go back to private consulting and the high-priced speakers’ circuit, but he does so with his stature diminished and his ego bruised.