Let me first preface this by saying that I write this as a Rudy Giuliani supporter. For a period of time earlier this year, I was officially consulting with the campaign, and I have remained a Rudy supporter since, though I’ve mostly put on my analyst hat when writing about the primary in this space.
For this one post, I will put the supporter hat back on. It will be that of a pretty dismayed supporter.
When I decided to support Rudy, the Big Three were McCain, Romney, and Rudy, and people referred to them mostly in that order. To me, Rudy was the best of all worlds: Romney’s executive ability combined with McCain’s authenticity. It did not surprise me in the least to see Rudy rocket to the top of the field. I always felt his national strength was vastly underestimated. His candidacy was a surprise to most. The hero of 9/11, his national credentials were unquestioned. And his positives far outshone those of John McCain, at least among Republican primary voters.
The CW at the time was that Rudy would fade after a withering assault over abortion and gays. That didn’t happen. Rudy took his hits, and many of the wounds were self-inflicted. But by and large, those issues were gotten out of the way early, which was to Rudy’s benefit.
When John McCain’s campaign imploded in July, Rudy seemed like a made man. McCain would continue his downward drift in the polls; his voters would naturally gravitate to Rudy.
In retrospect, the single worst thing to happen to Rudy in this election was the McCain “implosion.”
Why? Because the patron saint of McCain-Kennedy and campaign finance “reform” needed to be taken out properly. In the words of James Carville, “When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a b**** an anvil.” Losing staff is a mechanical issue. It is far worse to have a half-hearted candidate than a half-full campaign headquarters. McCain’s lifelong desire to be President, to rip the lungs out of any opponent who stood in his way (even his friend Rudy Giuliani), remained intact. And that is all that mattered.
Instead, we now have a situation in which McCain has not been the subject of a single negative press release in five and a half months. For someone with 95% national name ID, and a base of favorable support, that is pure gold. The McCain of late 2007 has become the Rudy of 2006, the national hero who seemed above the political fray and nobody would attack. Since losing his frontrunner status, McCain has even seemed like a non-candidate at times.
So, what we have are numbers like the favorable/unfavorable ratios from the Fox News poll released today. Given where McCain was months ago, these numbers are simply astonishing:
* John McCain 69% (63%) / 19% (20%) / ( 50%)
* Rudy Giuliani 62% (73%) / 25% (20%) / ( 37%)
* Mike Huckabee 46% (33%) / 15% (9%) / ( 31%)
* Fred Thompson 45% (55%) / 17% (15%) / ( 28%)
* Mitt Romney 46% (42%) / 23% (21%) / ( 23%)
Pre “implosion,” McCain was once at 55-41% fav/unfav with GOP primary voters.
So what happened?
I hate to say this, but I don’t think Rudy wants it badly enough. He has a bit of a Fred Thompson problem about him. He hasn’t said anything particularly distinctive or memorable the entire campaign. His lows haven’t been very low, and his highs haven’t been very high. There is no one big thing his campaign is about — first, there were twelve, then there was a laundry list of his accomplishments as a Mayor; then, there were a series of issue spots that failed to move the needle in New Hampshire. You would think the guy who sparred with the media and his opponents on an ongoing basis in New York, who fundamentally got that leadership after 9/11 was all about projecting confidence and strength, would understand that Presidential contests are about narrative and confidence and conflict — not (primarily) about issues.
The whole February 5th gambit has been a metaphor for all this. As Marc Ambinder writes today , there were (and are) valid reasons to buy into the Rudy strategy. Who knows — perhaps perpetually postponing the Day of Judgment will leave Rudy as the last guy standing in this knock-down drag-out primary season.
But take a step back, and there are some fundamental problems with how Rudy is positioning his campaign with this strategy.
First, it gives off the impression that he doesn’t want to win. That he’s looking for a TKO rather than a decisive knockout punch. That he won’t go mano-y-mano with any of the opponents who matter. And that he doesn’t care about retail politics (in fact, the IA and SC blowback alone has probably contaminated him in NH). Perceived electability is not just poll numbers in the general, but how someone conducts themselves in the primary. Do they fight, or do they try and win on a technicality? That’s a proxy for how they will perform against the Clinton machine, and voters pick up on those kinds of signals.
Second, it ignores the fluidity of the race. Rudy was never the frontrunner in any traditional sense. A fifteen point lead in the primary is not like a fifteen point lead in a general election. It can evaporate overnight. John Kerry went from 15 to 40 percent in the polls after winning Iowa. It was clear from the beginning that the situation was simply too fluid for Rudy to simply run out the clock.
Third (and I’ll concede this can be temporary until Florida & Feb. 5 is upon us) but Rudy has missed out on the publicity surrounding the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. The coverage of Romney vs. Huck in Iowa has created centrifugal motion around those two, with voters nationally aligning on both sides of the Iowa proxy war. The McCain surge in New Hampshire is not confined to one state, but creates a rallying effect around him nationally. Missing in all this is Rudy. Just as voters tuned in to the race in November and December, he was totally AWOL in the early state-centric coverage.
It may be that we need to revise our theory of the early states. Momentum isn’t just about winning the early states, but also about competing in them. By building a proof-of-concept first in Iowa or New Hampshire, you demonstrate strength before the concentrated national press corps, and if it’s for real, word will spread nationally long before Iowa.
Now, Rudy was never going to do well in South Carolina. Perhaps the same was true of Iowa. But New Hampshire? If someone like Rudy can’t win in New Hampshire, where can he win (save for the winner-take-all states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut)?
UPDATE: Jim Geraghty sketches out as good a pro-Rudy counterargument as any. In this crazy primary, it could still happen -- but it leaves a lot to chance. And let's not kid ourselves, even Jim's scenario was not part of any Rudy February 5th masterplan. Even rope-a-dope doesn't call for you to lose half your support in three weeks. His assessment of what awaits John McCain is dead on, though.