Picture of the Day - 2
The Giuliani campaign very publicly outlined its strategy yesterday (Ambinder, Politico, WSJ.)
They expect to lose all the early states where face to face meetings with the candidates predominate (Iowa, NH, SC,) but they then expect to win the Feb. 5th tsunami where the only candidate exposure will be through television ads.
You can claim that's strategy, but I think it says alot about their candidate.
Also: Take few minutes to watch this video. A Republican PR firm has produced a new "Giuliani girl" style video with high production values and some pretty disgusting lyrics.
"He is tough, knows how to lead,
in New York, he's seen them bleed,
global warming it won't matter,
if we get bombed and all get splattered."
It's the face of the new election.
(Rudy Giuliani ponders a question during a Town Hall meeting, Monday, Nov. 12, 2007, in St. Charles, Mo. (AP Photo/Tom Gannam))
posted by mikevotes at
3:04 PM
8 Comments:
With Romney the defacto native son in the New Hampshire primary, and the amount of self-financed advertising he's doing in Iowa and (I assume) SC, it might make sense for Rudy to keep his powder dry. Romney may flame out.
All the brouhaha and jockeying for position and front loading done by the states and the primaries, this could have some unintended side effects. Such as the early states being so early as to become moot. It's a long way to the conventions and in the political world shit happens. So Giuliani may to well by playing a game of lowered expections, and then build for February and beyond.
I still think Romney will be the GOP nominee. But Giuliani isn't out of the primary race yet. And keep your eye on Huckabee. I think he could be a dark horse in the race. If the GOP electorate gets tired of the shrill and creepy northeners, Huck could be a comfortable, homespun, southerner to hang your vote.
I can spew it like a beltway pundit, and with about as much veracity as well. :)
By
-epm, at 2:57 PM
Yeah, I understand the underlying dynamics, and I know this is just the Giuliani campaign lowering expectations and trying to prepare the ground to maintain "frontrunner" after they lose early, but at the same time, Giuliani isn't doing many open meetings with voters, and relatively few appearances in these early states at all.
Most of the Giuliani appearances are being done in front of near invitation audiences, not the sort of meet the voters events.
More generally, I don't think the earlyness of the Iowa/NH make them moot, but I do think the compressed calendar may diminish some of the usual momentum. Pretty much Feb 5th will be nominee day, and that will only be 5 weeks after it starts. That's not much time to fundraise and ramp up while trying to campaign in 20 states.
One more: I'm not so sure about Huckabee. I think he'll do okay by hitting the Ron Paul equivalent of individual disaffected Republican voters, but he doesn't seem to have any traction with the group leaders and not much organization.
By
mikevotes, at 4:10 PM
Good point about the group voters and Huck.I'm stuck with my befuddlement as to why he hasn't been the darling of the Religious Right. I guess it's that the Religious Right isn't so much religious as it is authoritarian. If Huck just wanted to be my president and not my National Pastor, there's a lot I could like about him. Jimmy Carter did a good job of separating his personal faith from his civil responsibilities. The GOP seems to miss the point.
I find it sad that Nominee Day will be nine months out from the general. We'll be in for a marathon of mud slinging if that's the case. Very big $$ will be spent. All in all, another sad day for American democracy.
By
-epm, at 6:43 AM
I assume you say the NYTimesCBS polling that shows him jumping to second in Iowa this morning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/us/politics/14poll.html?hp
But, yeah, I think you hit it on the head. It is largely about authority on the Republican side, and Huckabee just can't pull that off.
And, it's certainly going to be a long year.
By
mikevotes, at 7:25 AM
I hadn't seen the polling info. I'm just that damn prescient. A regular Rain Man of the political zeitgeist... :)
If Huck comes in a solid second in Iowa, look for him to get a huge boost in free media (which translates into voting booth credibility) moving into NH and SC. It could be one of those sea-change events of politics.
OK. I've beaten this to death. I'll let it go... for a while.
By
-epm, at 9:42 AM
I'll give you one more.
I don't think Huckabee translates to NH. You certainly have a better sense than I do. Maybe my regional stereotypes are wrong.
And as for SC, you gotta figure that Thompson will chop into Huckabee's target voters.
I really think he's running for VP. He's nice, hits the right Christian buttons, and won't overwhelm the the presidential candidate.
By
mikevotes, at 1:15 PM
Ron Paul will probably beat Huck in NH. We're much more Libertarian than the godly theocrats up here.
I don't know much about the south, save stereotypes, unfortunately. And I should point out that I consider everything from NJ and below to be "the south" :) So I don't have a sense of how that will play out in SC.
I hadn't given any thought the the VP. They say no one runs for VP, but a Romney/Huckabe ticket may work well for the GOP with independents.
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-epm, at 5:59 PM
The real south breaks into a couple of sections. There's the deep south, SC, Georgia, Miss, and Alabama, and then there's a kind of mitigated south like Florida Virginia or Texas where you have major population centers to counterbalance the deep south influence.
The mitigated south Republicans are actually the more dangerous because they're the ones who have to be more sophisticated in their presentations and power grabs.
As for VP, Huckabee works for Giuliani, too, although not as well. On the Dem side, I always thought Richardson was running for VP from day one.
By
mikevotes, at 9:15 PM
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