From National Reviews "The Corner"........
Another Potential Giuliani Advantage [John Podhoretz]
One of the reasons people were presuming Rudy might not be running a few months ago was his failure to begin organizing in primary states. McCain, we were told, had locked up so many donor networks and county chairmen and the like that you had to consider him the frontrunner even though the polls weren't showing that to be the case.
That may have gotten it exactly wrong. Here's why. What McCain has done over the past year is expensive. He's had to spend money and promise to spend more. Meanwhile, the entire dynamic of the primary next year is changing dramatically.
We may be in a situation in which California, New York, New Jersey and Florida all have their primaries on the same day — February 5. What does this mean? First, candidates are going to need a colossal amount of money before 2008 begins. And I mean colossal. They're not going to be able to throw their $20 million at Iowa and New Hampshire in hopes of getting a momentum boost that opens the money floodgates even more widely — because they're not going to have time to wait for Iowa and New Hampshire.
Here's a little-known fact about political advertising on TV: It has to be paid for in advance because campaigns go out of business very quickly and have been known to welsh on a debt or two. Therefore, TV and cable stations won't run your ad without a check that goes through first. You want to buy time in the New York City, Philadelphia, Miami, Orlando, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego media markets all at the same time? You're going to need lots and lots and lots AND LOTS of dollars on hand to do so.
McCain's organizing efforts over the past year may have been overtaken by events. By saving on the dough in the early going, Rudy may have figured out a way to leapfrog over the McCain advantage in organization.
03/08 02:18 PM
The primary calendar is way too front loaded next year IMHO. There is value is winnowing the candidates in a longer race, you see how the perform under pressure and they can't fudge an issue. The Dems had a less front loaded, but still fast, process in 2004 and they got Kerry, a lousy candidate.