Roxxxanne wrote:ebrown_p wrote:Finn dAbuzz wrote:
Maybe Thompson. Tough not to like the guy.
Factually, many of us don't find it tough at all.
Ditto
Ditto.
Hell, us three are all liberals of course, but I doubt you'll find anyone much who's not actually conservative (eg moderates, independents) who part who likes him. His appeal has really been limited to conservative base voters only, at least ever since he actually formally got in the race and promptly nosedived.
As for thinking Rudy is in good shape, dude... he's toast. Coming in last in Iowa does not need to be such a problem - if you never campaigned there in the first place. Up till about a month ago, Rudy really tried there though - but it just seems that the more they heard of him, the more they disliked him. And even after that he stopped visiting himself and didnt run TV ads, but did pursue a "covert" campaign intended to at least secure third or a reasonable fourth, with lots of mailers and radio ads that the mainstream media wouldnt pick up on but still have impact. They didnt, none.
Same story in New Hampshire. He was setting his eyes on victory in the state until just three weeks ago or so, putting a lot of effort and money in the state, yet all his numbers did in the last couple months is fall. Again, it seems like the more the locals saw of him, the less they liked him. Finally he just stopped going there altogether, and now he's destined to become a distant third at best, and more likely fourth or even fifth.
Up comes South Carolina, where he's going to do lousily, and Michigan, where he's already down to third, and he'll have come at the end of the pack in states across the country, from midwest to New England to the South. His campaign will be either ridiculed or ignored in all media coverage, or both.
Nationally, he long led the polls - all the way from back in the days when the media stubbornly called McCain the frontrunner. This is what he's been counting on; that the early primary states wont matter as much because he has the national momentum, and will confirm that lead in Florida, then NY and CA etc. But in the national polls he has dropped starkly even before the Iowa caucuses, with barely a couple points lead left on the others, and Huckabee, Romney and McCain rising to basically turn it in a four-man race. Where will he go after three ignonimous defeats?
The one first primary state he's put everything on is Florida. But even the overpowering lead he had in Florida has melted away already. By mid-December he was just 4-9 points ahead on Huckabee and Romney in three polls, and actually behind one or both in two others. No polls have been done since but you can imagine what has happened, and will still happen after Giuliani ends a bad third at best in NH and SC and is wiped out in media coverage.
That leaves NY and CA as his big bets. But really, how impressed will the voters in all the red states of the heartland be by a Republican candidate who has to rely on the quintessentially liberal coastal urban states for his support?
Unless he performs some magic trick, Rudy's toast, and thank God for it.
