He won’t actually be going streaking, Old School style, if he falls flat in Florida (thankfully), but if Rudy Giuliani is shut out of delegates after pouring all his resources into that state, we feel this rite of passage is appropriate.

Back in college, After W staffers were made by fraternity upperclassmen to run laps around campus if they were shut out in pool or foosball.

Naked. The conventional wisdom was that while the humiliation was great, it was warranted if one couldn’t tally a single point.

Rudy Giuliani may not be blanked Tuesday, but the situation is grim as he has lost much support and now ranks third or worse in polls.

It’s good they’re foregoing paychecks, because Giuliani aides who advocated eschewing early contests to focus on delegate-rich Florida - only to be shellacked repeatedly and nosedive in polls - sure haven’t earned them.

John McCain, Mitt Romney and even Mike Huckabee have posted big wins early in the GOP race, rendering Giuliani irrelevant.

Whether it’s naked run time for Rudy or not, we’ll see if he even stays in the race after the Florida primary Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has endorsed McCain for the Republican nomination over Giuliani, strongly criticizing the former mayor.

“Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George W. Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe,” the paper’s editorial board wrote.

“The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, exploiting his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign,” the paper writes, describing Giuliani as narrow, obsessively secretive, and vindictive.

The Times also endorsed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. The paper praised Clinton’s chief rival, Barack Obama, but called Clinton more qualified for the job.

Frontrunner John McCain made a pitch to the military, Mitt Romney bragged about his economic credentials and Rudy Giuliani - his campaign on life support - talked up hurricane insurance Tuesday in the Sunshine State.

Welcome to the circus of the Republican presidential race, entering its final week before Florida’s crucial primary.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, campaigning in Boca Raton, Coral Springs and Naples, used financial markets’ turmoil to make his case.

Giuliani, who banked on winning the delegate-rich Sunshine State after basically punting all states up until this point, is struggling to regain the momentum that once had him leading polls in Florida.

Ouch! Rudy Giuliani has fallen to fourth or worse in some polls.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who surged to a brief lead in Florida after his win in Iowa only to fade as his money has dried up, again spent much of Tuesday in Georgia before returning to Gainesville.

But at least he made it. Fred Thompson did not.

The former Tennessee senator needed a strong finish in South Carolina to stay in the race, and didn’t get it. He ended up with 16 percent - behind McCain and Huckabee, a point ahead of Romney - and quit the race.

Continue reading in the Palm Beach Post …

Who’s hot? Who’s not? Who’s personal life just keeps getting more interesting, and who can’t buy media coverage to save their life? The 2008 election may be 18 months away, but the race is in on. We’ve assessed the Democratic candidates and now, for the first time, we’re moving on to the even more wide open GOP field…

1. Rudy Giuliani, former New York City Mayor

The negative stories are beginning to flow, ladies and gentlemen, but his numbers stay high. Either the public simply doesn’t care about Rudy’s… shall we say, interesting personal life or they’re not paying attention.

One thing’s for sure: Every week Rudy Giuliani maintains a huge lead on John McCain makes it seem like a victory is a given and makes it tougher for anyone else to raise money against him. When’s he going to Iowa, though? Shouldn’t someone at his campaign HQ get on that?

2. John McCain, Arizona Senator

John McCain has a long way to go (though his NCAA picks weren’t as bad as we predicted). Something about his efforts so far seems forced, uninspiring. Of course, he’s still much more of an establishment candidate than the guy ahead of him, even if the GOP base is bored with him (the 2003 version of McCain would be a lock today). Still, he has a lot of things going for him, and a strong first debate effort against Giuliani could close the current gap considerably.

3. Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts Governor

The Mitt Romney campaign is somewhat of an enigma. Raising tons of money, scoring allies all over the place to back him, yet not gaining much in the way of traction among mainstream GOP voters. It all comes down to whether he can win New Hampshire and make it to February 5.

4. Tommy Thompson, former Wisconsin Governor

The man’s strategy is a good one. Focus all efforts on Iowa and try to win that first caucus, becoming the popular, mid-American alternative to the three frontrunners. Hey, it’s good enough for fourth in our rankings - but can he raise enough cash to make it happen? That;s another story.

5. Fred Dalton Thompson, former Tennessee Senator

Not sure what it says about the rest of the folks in this race that Fred Thompson merely mulling a run has him comfortably in contention for the Republican nomination. There’s already a sizable movement to draft him (see below). We still think an all-Law & Order, Sam Waterston-Thompson ticket would be tough to beat.

6. Sam Brownback, Kansas Senator

Any talk about Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich kills Sam Brownback. Not that we’re complaining. With this twit, less is more. And with another Thompson (Tommy) now going full-bore in Iowa as well, the Brownback campaign could come to a screeching halt really fast.

7. Duncan Hunter, California Congressman

An enormously popular U.S. Representative who has served California’s 52nd district with distinction for 26 years. That will be it, though. He just can’t get traction in this race.

8. Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor

A decent guy having trouble getting noticed in a large field. Guess America isn’t ready for another Arkansas governor (from Hope, believe it or not) in the White House. Either that or America just doesn’t heart Huckabees. Too much? Okay, sorry. Moving on.

9. Jim Gilmore, former Virginia Governor

We’re guessing his days are numbered. A hunch.

10. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Congressman

No matter how much it riles up some Republicans, immigration alone isn’t enough of an issue to get you noticed in a national campaign.

11. Ron Paul, Texas Congressman

Two first names. Always the kiss of death. That and never having renounced one’s membership in the Libertarian Party.

UNRANKED: Newt Gingrich, Chuck Hagel (although a sudden entry into the race from either means a berth in our top five).

Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute and former editorial writer for the Orlando Sentinel, notes that when it comes to Rudy Giuliani’s presidential prospects, the barometer of conventional wisdom has shifted radically in his favor.

The expert’s take, as printed in the Post Bulletin, is that the ex-mayor’s current surge in the White House futures market is worth taking seriously, but with a large grain of salt.

That’s because it is unclear whether Giuliani’s rise in the polls is based on most voters having enough information about him to make the same decision they will when they actually cast ballots early next year.

Saturday, Reuters reported Giuliani, who found himself virtually tied with John McCain in a January poll, now holds a shocking 25-point lead over the Arizona senator in a recent survey.

Among registered Republicans, 59 percent said they backed the former New York City mayor and 34 percent favored McCain, who announced Wednesday he would seek the presidency, the Newsweek poll found.

According to Brown, there are two key unknowns about Giuliani’s numbers:

• Is he leading because most Republican voters don’t know about his messy personal history and positions on social issues - or are they aware and believe his positive attributes outweigh these perceived drawbacks?
• Will his wide margin over potential Democratic opponents in the general election, based on the perception that he is a strong, experienced leader, withstand the scrutiny of a presidential campaign?

We won’t know for some time, probably until voters begin having their say in the primaries and caucuses. All candidates have unknowns. What makes Giuliani’s situation murkier is that his popularity stems from rhetorically standing up to terrorists after 9/11.

Otherwise, there is little public knowledge of his views and background - at least outside the New York metropolitan area.

These questions are probably too difficult to get at until Giuliani has endured a news media barrage and negative attacks from his opponents.

Continue reading this article …

Over the next two years, we’ll talk a lot about how organization and money establish who wins votes or how the Internet hijacks the process. Forget about it, the Boston Phoenix asserts: presidential politics conforms to a small number of rules that don’t much change from one campaign year to the next, and Rule #1 is the simplest of all:

Ideas. Win. Campaigns.

Sure, a winning campaign benefits from lots of things, from a ton of money and good press to a successful strategy. We’ve already watched Joe Biden implode, and we look forward to John McCain losing his temper in public for the first time.

But by focusing such heavily on these things, the media tends to overlook what a successful candidate needs above all: a central vision. A compelling idea.

In the end, voters don’t really care which organizers the candidates hire in New Hampshire; they care about where the prospective leaders promise to take the United States of America.

An idea is not a platform or a collection of boring policy proposals, or a bunch of ambiguous positions (cough, John Kerry).

Rather, it’s a broad animating concept that voters can rally around.

John Kennedy inspired America by proclaiming “It’s Time to Get This Country Moving Again.” After Watergate and Vietnam, Jimmy Carter reminded us that it needed a complete Washington outsider at the reins of government. Bill Clinton understood that a new Democratic Party needed to re-establish its appeal to the average voters - and that it was the economy (stupid) that mattered most to them.

This year, a lot of candidates have big ideas. As the first serious woman presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton will likely focus her campaign on the idea that a woman would be a very different and better type of leader than a man (whether Hillary represents that notion authentically is a different matter entirely, but that’s for another time).

Barack Obama, meanwhile, will undoubtedly articulate a similar vision from the perspective of race; he’s already begun to argue for a new beginning of partisan-free politics that could tie neatly into this theme.

The notion of the first female or black president is so powerful that New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, a fine candidate and himself the nation’s first credible Hispanic presidential aspirant, may have trouble getting traction just because he isn’t Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

The bottom line is that with Obama and Clinton in the race, the rest of the Democratic field better have big ideas of their own.

John Edwards, with his poverty-centered “two Americas” theme, has clearly given some thought to how he might compete with the front-runners , while the rest of the Democratic field doesn’t seem as prepared.

Continue reading this article …

Courting the Republican rank and file in an important state, Rudy Giuliani sought to make the case that his vision for the future and performance in the past makes him a strong candidate for the GOP presidential nomination.

“The government’s got to work in order for the American people to have confidence in it,” the former New York City mayor said. “And I believe there is something I can do about that.”

“Leadership is about vision and performance.”

According to the Boston Globe, Giuliani told state GOP activists that they must hold each candidate to that standard when deciding where to throw their support.

“Who has the vision and who can perform? Because you need both. You can ultimately judge whatever I promise you and whatever vision that I have by the things that I’ve done,” Giuliani said.

In his first visit to the state since he formed a presidential exploratory committee late last year, Giuliani sounded and acted very much like a full-fledged White House candidate in 2008 even as he insists he has not made a final decision.

“Every day you get closer, but we don’t have a timetable yet,” he told reporters, adding that he has received a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and a lot of people signaling support. But he still has to decide if he will make “a unique contribution” to help strengthen the country.

In line with his campaign strategy, Giuliani emphasized his tenure as mayor of what was once a crime-ridden city in financial disrepair and his steady hand in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when terrorists struck.

He hopes to convince voters that his record of leadership in difficult times trumps any political vulnerability that mays stem from moderate stances on social issues such as gun control, abortion and gay rights.

Those are potential liabilities in a GOP primary in which hard-line conservatives are a central voting group, as the stolen / leaked campaign memo from authored by his staff correctly surmised.

Many Democrats surely fear the thought of Hillary Clinton campaigning against a social moderate with Giuliani’s track record for leadership - but for Republicans, his background and positions are also a tough sell at times.

Continue reading this article …

The New York Daily News has compiled some highlights from the campaign memo lost by (or stolen from) the Giuliani camp, which has been a magnet for controversy over the past week.

Apparently compiled at the end of October, the memo includes a number of routes upon which a rival would attack Rudy Giuliani in his bid for the presidency, as well as fundraising strategies and schedules.

A handwritten page listing “problems” that Giuliani might face if he runs for the White House in 2008 singled out the following:

1. His association with disgraced former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
2. His three marriages, including the messy breakup with ex-wife Donna Hanover and his subsequent marriage to Judith Nathan.
3. His business interests and his views on social issues, which are decidedly more liberal than those of most Republicans.

It’s always funny to read that last point as a potential detractor of Rudy, since those of us on the left view Republicans with less conservative views on social issues as potentially more dangerous in an election.

Notes suggest his aides were more concerned about Giuliani’s vulnerability than he would ever let on. One line reads: “Does any of it cause RWG [Giuliani] to lose his luster? confidence? Donors to drop off? Drop out of race?”

In getting him into financial position to make a serious bid, Giuliani aides have come up with an aggressive fund-raising schedule that sets a $100-125 million goal for 2007. The plan calls for no fewer than 250 fund-raising events over the course of the year, including 50 from February 15-31.

His personal schedule reveals a man pulled far afield: In a three-month period, Giuliani was to be in 11 countries on four continents.

Borrowing a page from George W. Bush, Giuliani may categorize his top fund-raisers. Using baseball terms, “Team Captains” would bring in $1 million each, MVPs would bring in $200,000 each, All-Stars would bring in $100,000 and Sluggers $50,000.

Leave it to Republicans to come up with such nonsense. In baseball, anyone can be named captain. How would they be ranked above the MVP of the whole league? Is Jason Varitek more integral to the Boston Red Sox than David Ortiz on the basis of his captaincy? What about someone like Derek Jeter, who fits all of the above? What if the “slugger” is like Mark McGwire and tainted by allegations of steroid use?

And perhaps most importantly, why do you need these silly designations for your deep-pocketed donors anyway? Forget it.

The dossier contains a wish-list flow chart of key Republican backers seen as vital in winning the nomination. Some have signed onto Rudy Giuliani’s campaign; others have not committed or have gone to a man seen as his big rival, Sen. John McCain. Here’s a look at how the allies named in the memo are currently aligned:

Joining Giuliani: Home Depot founder Ken Langone, hedge fund manager Paul Singer and Texas oil tycoon Boone Pickens.

Joining the exploratory committee of John McCain: New Jersey fund-raisers Lew Eisenberg and Larry Bathgate, FedEx CEO Fred Smith, and Henry Kravis.

Uncommitted: Paramount CEO Brad Grey, former Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, PepsiCo chief Dawn Hudson, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

Was the 140-page document outlining the potential presidential campaign strategy of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost or stolen?

Either way, one thing’s for sure: it’s not good!

The leaked memo is the scandal of the day, according to CBS News, which quotes a Giuliani spokeswoman as saying the campaign outline was stolen from an aide’s suitcase last fall, photocopied, and then put back to the aide’s suitcase.

Wow. If that’s not a classic case of political backstabbing, what is?

“This is clearly a dirty trick,” Sunny Mindel said. “The voters are sick and tired of this kind of thing.”

The document was obtained to the New York Daily News, which published a story about the Giuliani plan on Tuesday. The newspaper said it obtained the document from a source sympathetic to one of Giuliani’s presidential rivals.

The source said the plan had been left behind in one of the cities where Giuliani campaigned for GOP candidates prior to the November elections.

The blueprint includes a plan to raise at least $100 million in funds in 2007, receiving support of major GOP donors like Lew Eisenberg and Larry Bathgate, both from New Jersey, and Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx. Those three are already supporting Sen. John McCain’s bid for the White House.

The document also predicts $100 million could be spent against Giuliani to highlight political vulnerabilities like his three marriages, his support for disgraced former aide Bernard Kerik, and a moderate stance on social issues such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.

Mitt Romney is loving this right now.

Mindel downplayed the importance of the plan, saying it was simply ideas jotted down on paper over three months ago. But an adviser to McCain was quick to point out the embarrassment losing such a document might produce.

“I’m surprised that something like that would ever leave the custody of a campaign, and that such raw and frank information would be around the countryside,” John Weaver told the New York Times.

After stepping down as mayor of New York shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Giuliani built a thriving business as a security consultant.

He is a hugely popular fundraiser for his party, due in large part to his overwhelmingly positive response to the attacks. He has even been dubbed “America’s Mayor” by many conservatives and leads McCain in most polls.

Giuliani declined comment on whether he will seek a criminal investigation into the alleged theft of the campaign memo.