It looks like betting on Florida didn't pay off all that well.
Posted on 01/28/2008 12:51:55 PM PST by .cnI redruM
Rudy Giuliani appears to be pondering an end to his long pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination.
In a meeting in the back of his chartered plane en route to St. Petersburg, Fla., a short while ago, the onetime, longtime GOP front-runner told a small group of reporters, including The Times' Louise Roug: "The winner of Florida will win the nomination."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
But...I thought he was inevitable.
>>An LA Times hit job, or the end of the road for Rudy?<<
From just the direct Rudy quotes, I don’t see the headline being merited. If he really does signal this before the actual Florida vote I would think this helps McCain.
Giuliani's baffle-gab to dupe the electorate flopped miserably. His whacked-out bizarre strategy of "saving himself for the big states" saying he wasn't competing in early primaries/caucses was a big crock. His flop in Florida on Tuesday will tbe sound heard round the world. His presidential ambitions are over.
Up until the bitter end, Giuliani was duping the voters. He just announced his top staffers are working gratis---b/c Giuliani wants voters to think he managed to spend all his campaign money without having actually competed in any of the early primary/caucus states.
Bigtime Baloney. The truth is that Rudy spent all his money because he HAS competed in all those states, and he lost dismally. The number of times Rooty went to New Hampshire to campaign was second only to Romney.
Rudy just CLAIMS he hasn't been competing because the results show he is a bigtime loser, a political reject, trounced by primary/caucus voters.
Giuliani practically lived in Florida to get his campaign launched---and he can't even get transplanted New Yorkers in Fla to rally behind him. Giuliani's flim-flam game has made him lose whatever credibility he had left (not much).
Really??
I didn’t know that.
No love for the Rudy-bots! How sad!
Just saw a talking head indicate that Giuliani would be inclined to endorse McCain upon departure.
Rudy poses no threat anymore.
We need him to stick around for a while longer.
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No, he isn't. Unfortunately, he's not alone.
How does it seem like that?
Because the polls don’t mean squat at this time in the primaries, they have been swinging wildly almost every day, and their record this year... - well, it sucks. :)
Also, Rudy was considered a potential candidate for so long that the Republicans had a chance to examine his liberal tendancies and didn’t like everything they saw. I don’t think they’ve examined Romney as well.
He’s not going to drop out before the primary tomorrow. If (when) he doesn’t win tomorrow, then he’ll drop out. That’s not news. He’s been pretty clear that his campaign is contingent upon winning Florida.
Do you think he’s VP slot shopping?
Heh.
If McCain is elected president, he will switch parties and become a Democrat.
He would do it to avoid the serious challenge he would face within the GOP for renomination in 4 years.
McCain would move quickly to pump up his Democrat credentials as soon as he takes office.
Your post is almost word for word, my early posts on Rudy before Ms clinton had run for her second term in NY.
Great minds and all that ... 8^)
It looks like betting on Florida didn't pay off all that well.
Of course, that fact creates a powerful incentive for Rudy to drop out.
I don't believe that is necessarily true regardless who wins tomorrow because the winning margin is going to be under 2 points and neither will get anything close to a large plurality. If I thought this was going to be a blowout, then, maybe there'd be this big boost of momentum.
And the math on 2/5 makes this not necessarily true, too. Because of the penalty to FL, the votes Romney would get (should he win) would nearly completely be canceled out by McCain winning winner-take-all NJ (52 vs. 57 delegates), which makes a win by Romney in FL a necessity to merely keep up with McCain's slam-dunk pocketing of NJ, after Rudy drops out Wednesday. If McCain wins, Romney has plenty of money to contest in the South and in the West and pocket all those anti-McCain votes. This race isn't over at all, though Rudy's candidacy would indeed be.
The last Florida poll I saw had Rudy in Huckster territory. If it finishes that way, I'd think he's got to get out.
If Rooty thought this was true, he would have commissioned his own polls to show him doing better.
The REALITY is that Rooty Toot ALWAYS starts out as the frontrunner, but as soon as Republicans find out what he actually stands for, he loses most of his support. That is why he vanished from Iowa and New Hampshire and never even bothered to go to South Carolina. The whole "Florida strategy" was to try to find the least conservative voters and it's still not working.
Rooty should have learned from John sKerry's "I was in Vietnam" campaign strategy that just standing up and saying, "I was there on 9/11" would only get him so far, sooner or later Rooty had to start talking about the issues and that's what killed him.
LOL, so true.
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