Arrivederci, Rudy

Rudy Giuliani, who had staked his entire campaign on pulling off an unlikely victory in the state, emerged the big loser in the Florida primary — finishing in a distant third place behind John McCain and Mitt Romney. Giuliani is now expected to drop out of the race in advance of tonight's Republican debate in California, and throw his support behind McCain.

There will be plenty of post-mortems about the Giuliani campaign, which disintegrated from front-runner to non-starter, and most of them will focus on two things: (a) his failure to compete in the early primary states, and (b) his being out of touch with the Republican base on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.

Those items surely helped take down his candidacy, but Westmonster posits the following: Candidate Rudy was an unlikely winner from the start, and his early front-runner status was merely a function of name recognition above all else.

Rudy Giuliani transcended the limitations of his office on 9/11, achieving a stature no predecessor as New York mayor had ever reached in the wake of the most grandiose tragedy ever to befall the U.S. He was dubbed "America's Mayor," and parlayed his stature into a lucrative consulting and lecturing business that gave him the exposure (and contributor base) to mount a presidential campaign.

For years, Giuliani wrapped himself in the WTC attacks, and was mocked throughout his campaign for the number of times he'd utter the phrase "9/11" in speeches. While the memory of that day hasn't faded for many Americans, fear of terrorism had receded as a key issue amongst voters, and Rudy's tendency to stoke that fear reminded too many people of the current occupant of the White House.

He never built a positive campaign narrative, or if he did, it never made it out in front of the voters. Branded a one-note candidate, Giuliani might have been the perfect guy for the 2004 election, but he seemed too much in 2008 to be reaching to the past.

Now, as he steps forward to endorse John McCain, this may create a compelling dynamic in the race for the nomination of a divided Republican party. Neither McCain nor Giuliani fits the mold of the Reagan-era GOP. Each appeals to a side of the party that had been written off as irrelevant as recently as 2004, the so-called Republican moderate.

And it remains to be seen the extent to which Giuliani's endorsement will prove accretive to McCain's support. McCain's moderate on immigration and campaign finance, but definitely not on abortion or gay rights. Their common ground is on national security, which is simply not at the top of voters' minds.

Westmonster speculates this will result in a slight boost for McCain, but will leave a lot of fervent Giuliani supporters to sit this one out (or peel off to support Libertarian nutcase — that's right, we said "nutcase" — Ron Paul). There are a lot of ifs, but there's a potential that Giuliani pulling out of the race actually turns out benefitting a guy on the other side of the political fence: Senator Barack Obama. But that's a whole other post.

Written by Andrew Levy on 30 Jan 2008 10:28 AM. There are 1 comments so far. Permalink