Out of Sight? Giuliani's New York Advantage Slides

I've suggested numerous times now that Rudy Giuliani's Florida election strategy is likely to turn out poorly for him. Mainly, the dynamics of media and momentum - taking place for nearly a month - will have passed him by, relegating his once frontrunner presidential campaign to the dustbin.

We won't know for sure until the Florida election on January 29. However, the New York Times reports on the results of a WNBC/Marist poll that finds Giuliani slipping badly in public opinion relative to GOP frontrunner John McCain:

The strong advantage that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani enjoyed in his home state appears to be slipping away, according to the latest WNBC/Marist Poll, while Senator Hillary Clinton is still leading among the Democrats of New York.

Among likely Republican voters, 33 percent said they supported Senator John McCain. Mitt Romney is the preference of 19 percent, while 18 percent said they would vote for Mr. Giuliani and Mike Huckabee is backed by 15 percent.

When undecided voters who lean toward a particular candidate are included, Mr. McCain has 34 percent, Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani both have 19 percent and Mr. Huckabee is still supported by 15 percent.

Some media outlets are sticking by Giuliani's cause; and some polling data indeed shows Giuliani contending well in the Sunshine State.

But the former New York Mayor polled just 2 percent in South Carolina's primary last Saturday. With a week to go before the next vote, Giuliani somehow needs to shift the media focus away from frontrunner McCain and his main challenger for the nomination, Mitt Romney.

Giuliani's circumstances seem more do-or-die than ever.

Republican Race Moves to Florida

The race for the Republican presidential nomination is headed to Florida, where the Sunshine State holds its primary on January 29.

The Washington Post has the story (via Memeorandum):

Riding the momentum from his weekend victory in South Carolina, John McCain turned his attention Sunday to Florida and the high-stakes primary there that will test whether the Arizona senator can consolidate support among Republican voters and take control of the GOP nomination battle.

The Jan. 29 contest in Florida will be the first Republican primary closed to independent voters, who have provided McCain with his margins of victory in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. A victory, strategists agreed, would stamp McCain as the front-runner in what has been a muddied Republican race and give him a clear advantage heading toward Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

Leaving South Carolina on Sunday, McCain at first seemed hesitant to adopt the mantle of Republican leader. "I don't know how to define a front-runner," he told reporters asking him if he believed he was now the candidate to beat in the GOP race.

Minutes later, he changed his mind. Asked about critical comments from former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, McCain shot back with a grin, "When someone hasn't run a primary, I can understand why they would attack the front-runner."

Florida has played a pivotal role in the past two general elections and now is poised to help determine who the Republicans will send into the main event this November. The primary looms as a potential showdown in the GOP nomination battle not only because of its size and importance but because it will be the first this year in which all the leading candidates are competing.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has won Nevada's caucuses and the Michigan primary in the past week, sees Florida as a potential breakthrough for his once-battered candidacy and is pouring more of his personal fortune into the state in an effort to deny McCain a victory.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, after a loss to McCain in South Carolina, looks to Florida as perhaps a last opportunity to show that his Iowa caucus victory at the start of the nominating season was not a fluke. A second consecutive Southern loss would be especially costly for the underfunded Huckabee.

But what makes Florida most different from the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina is the presence of Giuliani as a full-fledged participant. The onetime national front-runner has finished far back in the Republican pack this year -- behind Rep. Ron Paul of Texas in Iowa, Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina. But Giuliani has been parked in Florida for several weeks and has made the primary the critical test for his candidacy.

Whether former senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee will be competing at all remains a question mark after his third-place finish in South Carolina, the state he was hoping would give him his first breakthrough of the year.

There was considerable speculation that Thompson would quit the race if he did not do well in South Carolina, but aides said Sunday that no decision had been made. "We are in the process of assessing the state of the campaign, but as of this point no decisions or plans have been made one way or the other," spokesman Todd Harris said.

Florida offers a large and complex battleground for the Republican candidates.

Certainly, Florida will likely prove to be the GOP's next bellwether state. But frankly, I'll be surprised if any of the other GOP contenders are able to slow McCain's momentum (see my comments yesterday on McCain's assumptive frontrunner status).

McCain currently is leading the GOP field in Florida pollling (see the polling averages over at RealClearPolitics). While there's been a good deal of criticism of the polls this season, the predictions on the Republican side have been accurate. Polls showed the race in South Carolina tightening by the end of last week, and Saturday's results ended up being right in line with most of the major surveys.

It's still too early to rely on a polling snapshot for Florida at this point. But McCain emerged as the national frontunner in the polls following his big New Hampshire victory. Surveys find the Arizona Senator as the top candidate of either party on experience and leadership, and McCain's most likely to defeat the Democratic nominee in November. Look this week for new national surveys finding McCain consolidating his frontrunner status. The dramatically increased media and momentum for the McCain campaign is a huge asset leading up to the Florida vote.

Pundits had said all last week that McCain had to win in South Carolina to prove his viability. He's done that now. The burden is on the rest those in the GOP field to demonstrate their staying power (or starting power, in the case of Rudy Giuliani).

I'll have more analysis in the week ahead.

Photo Credit: Washington Post

Giuliani Campaign On the Ropes

Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign is on the ropes, according to the latest reports.

Here's this morning's Los Angeles Times story:

Rudolph W. Giuliani, once the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, said Friday that some of his staffers had started forgoing their salaries to ease the strain on the campaign's budget.

Giuliani told reporters at an appearance in Florida that the aides volunteered to defer their pay "to stretch the dollars even further." The former New York mayor has $7 million in hand to spend in upcoming primaries -- enough, his campaign said, to compete through the crucial Super Tuesday contests in more than 20 states, including California, Feb. 5.

Still, many political observers said the news signaled a surprising cash squeeze in a campaign that was thought to be managing its finances well. It also underscored Giuliani's sharp decline in recent weeks from front-runner to struggling contender, they said, while renewing questions about the wisdom of his decision to essentially take a pass on the earliest contests. The candidate has staked his prospects on winning in Florida on Jan. 29.

"He's in a tough spot," said John J. Pitney Jr., a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former Republican National Committee staffer. "Up to now, Giuliani's fundraising appeared to be a major advantage, but . . . he's probably burned through a lot of money."

Campaign officials said that the budget situation dovetailed with their strategy of betting heavily on Florida and of using momentum from a primary victory here to galvanize fresh fundraising and support.

Giuliani, speaking to reporters after a stop at a school in the southern Florida community of Coral Gables, playfully said his campaign was using "a strategy of lulling your opponents into a false sense of security."

"Everyone has their own strategy," he said. "We think this is the best strategy, given our assets."

I've noted with increasing frequency of late how disastrous Giuliani's Florida launch pad strategy is looking. It's hard to beat the phenomenon of momentum, especially in with such a tightly frontloaded calendar, and not to mention the hunger in the electorate for change, leadership, or whatever's out there.

Sunday's Times of London fairly well places Giuliani's campaign on the precipice of disaster:

STRUGGLING to regain his former eminence in Republican presidential polls, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, last week announced the formation of a “catastrophe advisory committee” to help him form policies on handling national disasters. Some of his rivals promptly quipped that he should start by investigating his own campaign.

“Either Rudy is a genius, and is about to defy half a century of conventional political wisdom,” noted one leading New York Democrat last week. “Or he has run the most stupid presidential campaign in history.”

As Giuliani set off on a three-day bus trip around Florida yesterday, his once-commanding lead in Republican opinion polls had evaporated, he was trying to save money by not paying aides and his campaign strategy of focusing mainly on big industrial states was threatening to reduce him to also-ran status.

It has been a terrible new year for the former mayor, whose leadership credentials - built on his internationally acclaimed performance in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 - established him as the frontrunner last year.

As recently as early last month, Giuliani was almost 15 points clear of the field in national polls; he was 33 points ahead in his native New York and 15 points up in Florida, which holds its primary on January 29. But a series of embarrassing political setbacks has knocked his legs from under him.

In one national poll last week, he plunged to third place among Republican candidates, with only 16% of the vote. In New York on Friday a Survey USA poll showed that his lead over John McCain, the surging Ari-zona senator who won the New Hampshire primary, had sunk to just three points.

Even Florida, long targeted by Giuliani as his ideal state to launch a winning campaign, is turning into a minefield. In a poll last Friday, he slipped into second place, eight points behind McCain.

Giuliani joked last week that he was lulling his rivals into “a false sense of confidence” and that victory in Florida would catapult him to the front of the race, a week before Super Tuesday on February 5, when 22 states will vote and the Republican nomination may be decided.

Yet his decision to ignore Iowa and to campaign only desultorily in New Hampshire has left him dangerously marginalised and running out of cash as McCain and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who won in Iowa, have grabbed the political momentum and media limelight regarded as crucial to a successful White House campaign.

“Giuliani is done,” claimed Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire’s poll survey centre. “He has run possibly the worst campaign of a leading candidate that I can remember. They made an incredibly bad strategic decision.”

It's not just strategic missteps hurting Giuliani's presidential aspirations:

Yet it is not just poorly conceived campaign strategy that is to blame for Giuliani’s woes. The emergence last year of embarrassing revelations about the costs of providing security for his mistress when he was mayor was followed by a run of negative publicity about his family, his business connections and his health.

At one point he entered hospital after a crippling headache forced him to turn around his campaign jet in mid-air, although tests revealed nothing serious. As the national media began to focus on Iowa and New Hampshire, Giuliani found himself starved of attention.

Suddenly America no longer seems interested in Giuliani’s 9/11 exploits, the cornerstone of his electoral appeal. As the violence in Iraq appears to be subsiding, and with the economy rapidly becoming the issue of most concern to voters, Giuliani has begun to sound like a broken record when he talks of his performance as “America’s mayor”.

The "9/11 theme" has worn thin, no matter how powerful a message underlies its initial appeal.

Still, the strategic mistakes for Giuliani seem monumental, considering how basic the crucial importance of Iowa and New Hampshire are to students of political science. Titles to some of the basic texts in electoral studies - for example, Media and Momentum: The New Hampshire Primary and Nomination Politics - are a pretty clue to importance of the early contests in contemporary nomination politics (a quick Google search turns up more recent titles).

Sure, the journalists could be wrong. The former New York Mayor could pull out a dramatic win in one of the upcoming elections and sweep into contention on February 5. I'm not a betting man, but there'd be good odds against a Guiliani comeback.

Photo Credit: New York Times.

Rudy Giuliani and Homeland Security

Rudy Giuliani's got a new article over at City Journal laying out his plan for homeland security:

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States has confronted both the deadliest attack and one of the most destructive natural disasters in the nation’s history. The term “homeland security” wasn’t part of the national debate during the 2000 election. Now, after September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, every American understands that homeland security is at the heart of a president’s responsibility.

There have been no fewer than 14 attempted domestic terrorist attacks and nine international plots against American citizens and interests since 9/11, according to reports in the public record. There have been plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and airplanes crossing the Atlantic. Terrorists have conspired to murder American soldiers at Fort Dix and planned to ignite the fuel lines beneath John F. Kennedy International Airport. Not a single post-9/11 plot on U.S. soil has succeeded to date. That is no accident; it is a measure of our increased vigilance as a nation.

The fight against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups will be America’s central challenge for years to come. We will achieve victory in what I call the Terrorists’ War on Us only by staying on offense: defeating terrorist organizations and hunting down their leaders, wherever they are; helping Afghanistan and Iraq establish stable and representative governments; aiding the spread of good governance throughout the Muslim world; and defeating militant Islam in the war of ideas.

Such international efforts are essential to winning this war, but not sufficient. We must also protect our people and economy, secure our borders, and prevent terrorist attacks here at home. These responsibilities are the domestic dimension of the larger struggle, and they require a focus on more than terrorism. As Stephen Flynn points out in his book The Edge of Disaster, “Nearly 90 percent of Americans are currently living in locations that place them at moderate to high risks of earthquakes, volcanoes, wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, or high-wind damage.” Preparing for terrorist attacks and for natural disasters are complementary goals: when cities and states prepare for natural disaster, they also strengthen our response to potential terrorism.

Read the whole thing.

Giuliani points to three components of a continuing domestic anti-terror program: prevention, preparedness, and resilience.

I like what he says about domestic surveillance:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enacted in 1978 to exclude eavesdropping on foreign communications from judicial oversight, must be modernized and expanded to encompass not just phones, as the current law does, but also newer technologies, such as the fax machine and the Internet. Antiquated laws—enacted when such technologies weren’t part of everyday life—cannot be allowed to hamstring our federal law enforcement and foreign intelligence services. Some members of Congress want to throw as many legal obstacles as possible in front of FBI agents and intelligence officers as they try to intercept communications between known al-Qaida leaders and U.S.-based operatives who will carry out attacks. This is the last thing we should do.

That's not going to be popular with the left's civil liberties wing.

Giulani's campaign has lost some of his luster, and he's not my pick for the nomination, but I'm confident the country would be in good hands under a Giuliani administration.

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UPDATE: Red State offers a powerful endorsement of Giuliani for president:

Oh, I know it’s not fashionable to support the Mayor these days. He took a beating in December over allegations (since proven unfounded) that he abused City funds to pursue his extra-curricular love life. His failure to do a Romney-style flip-flop on social issues has earned him the undying enmity of many on the right. His strategy (and it is a strategy, by the way) of trying to reduce the utterly inequitable influence of Iowa and New Hampshire over the primary process and focus instead on states with more than seven electoral votes has been declared dead-before-arrival by those who are quite sure they know better. Conventional wisdom wags its sagacious head and tells us he’s done.

But then again, Rudy’s never been a conventional wisdom type. And neither have I.

So here’s why I've chosen Giuliani. He functions under inconceivable pressure. When the proverbial refuse hits the fan, he is able to think beyond himself, make decisions and exert that elusive quality of “leadership” that can pull a country through tragedy and loss. You don’t need me to tell you this. We know it for a grim fact. We all remember where we were on 9/11. I think it’s pretty safe to say we all remember Giuliani. I cannot tell you how Mitt Romney, John McCain, Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee would behave under comparable circumstances. I can guess, and I expect some would do better than others. Certainly Senator McCain’s biography demonstrates that the Mayor does not have a monopoly on personal heroism. But do I think any of them would surpass Giuliani in a major national security crisis?

I doubt Giuliani's got anything on McCain in terms of resolve in facing domestic and international crises.

McCain remains my first pick, as readers know.

I don't have a second pick, but unlike some conservatives, I will not panic over a Huckabee nomination, crossing over to vote for the Democratic nominee.

Giuliani's Resiliency

Rudolf Giuliani's still got some wind in his sails, according to this Wall Street Journal article:

Rudy Giuliani's quest for the Republican presidential nomination is running into turbulence.

After selling himself more successfully than many expected, the former New York mayor's lead in national polls is narrowing. He could lose four early primary states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina -- before reaching more favorable territory, such as Florida, New York and California. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's surge is rallying evangelicals and social conservatives who up until now have been divided and dispirited. The business dealings of Mr. Giuliani's company are under increasing scrutiny.

But like the city he once ran, Mr. Giuliani on the campaign trail is also turning out to be more resilient than expected -- drawing on decades of retail politics in New York as he works crowds with ease and vigor.

As his lead has narrowed in the past month, Mr. Giuliani has unleashed a blizzard of television ads in New Hampshire touting his economic record in New York and his toughness on terrorism. He has come out in support of a Supreme Court challenge to gun-control laws in an effort to bolster his support among conservative Republicans. He has lashed out at Mitt Romney in a televised debate, accusing him of running a "sanctuary mansion" because the lawn service Mr. Romney used employed illegal immigrants.

What his supporters and opponents are wondering is whether these moves and his campaign skills will be enough to overcome the hurdles that are coming into clearer and closer view.

Read the whole thing.

I'm less enthusiastic about Giuliani as I had been. His YouTube debate performance was weak. I don't know, but something turned me off with the nasty attacks on Mitt Romney.

After John McCain I don't really have a favorite. Electability in the general election is a key, so Giuliani might have an edge over Mike Huckabee in that respect.

We'll see.

Giuliani's Gamble

Kimberly Strassel, over at the Wall Street Journal, argues that Rudy Giuliani's rolling the dice with his bold campaign strategy of skipping the early primary contests to focus on bigger states like Florida, California, and New York. It's a risky bet, because the frontloaded nomination process reward winners in Iowa and New Hampshire with tremendous momentum. Then why do it? What's Rudy's game?

Strassel's says he's got a plan, based on the campaign's prediction that electoral circumstances in 2008 are different:

Changed circumstance No. 1 is this year's hypercompressed primary season. Whereas winners once got to bask in the glow of their early victories - and rake in the cash - for many weeks before Super Tuesday, this year they'll get to bask a few hours. Mr. Giuliani's Florida, his "firewall" where he has spent his biggest chunk of cash and currently holds a 17-point lead over Mr. Romney, will take place on Jan. 29, just 10 days after South Carolina.

Meanwhile the races on Giga Tuesday (Feb. 5) alone, which include other big Giuliani prospects such as California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois, represent nearly half the delegates necessary to secure the nomination. The Giuliani bet is that the time frame has collapsed enough that he can check any rival "momentum" by cleaning up big in the mega-states.

Changed circumstance No. 2 is the unusual nature of the Republican field itself, in which there is no clear front-runner and voter confusion. Evangelical endorsements are scattered. Terrorism is also making its debut in a Republican primary, and has splintered the usual cohesion of social conservatives and single-issue voters. No one candidate has been able to break away, which means no one is likely to emerge with early landslide victories. Mr. Giuliani is counting that this muddle will deny a Mr. Romney or Fred Thompson the decisive victories they'd need to later challenge in bigger states. It might also allow the mayor some respectable finishes in the early races.

Finally, there's Mr. Giuliani, superstar. The big seduction of the early primaries is that they allow candidates who aren't well known to catapult into the news, thereby becoming household names. Thanks to September 11, Mr. Giuliani is right up there in household names with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. While a onetime Southern governor like Mr. Huckabee has to get a ticket out of Iowa if he wants a shot, Mr. Giuliani may have more flexibility.

The caveats? The New Yorker's ability to pull this off hinges on his ability to truly clean up in the mega-states. His campaign is already boasting that his leads in some of those places are "momentum-proof." But that's the sort of bold statement that borders on hubris. Even with a sped-up primary schedule, five hard-fought contests (the usual three, plus Nevada and Michigan) will still go down before the nation ever bats an eye at Florida. Allowing a campaign to go 0 for 5 in the run-up to that big day gives a new meaning to the word "risk."

The very idea is apparently giving even the Giuliani campaign the cold sweats. So much so that now that the mayor has built up his position in the bigger states, he's working backward. Yesterday the campaign unveiled its first television ad, and its home will be . . . New Hampshire. It's even hinting it hopes to take the state.

This is itself risky. Of all the early plays, New Hampshire's the best bet for Mr. Giuliani, and his TV spot about his economic and crime success in New York is designed to appeal to state Republicans looking for a fiscally sound tough guy. Think of it, too, as a potential death blow to one or more competitors. Mr. Giuliani sure is. Mr. Romney needs to show he can win in his own backyard (and he currently holds a double-digit lead), while John McCain continues to count on the state he won by 19 points in 2000. The downside is that the Giuliani campaign is now playing the expectations game, and losing will only give a boost to the winner.

Primaries are inherently unpredictable, and Mr. Giuliani's foes have no intention of letting the mayor set the rules. But win or lose, Mr. Giuliani deserves marks for daring to play big.

I don't know if I'd be willing bet as big as Giuliani. My advice would be to put more chips on the New Hampshire table. Some polls have Giuliani trailing Romney by just bit over 10 percent. Even if he can't take out Romney in the Granite state, a strong second there ought to keep his campaign rolling long enough the pocket some big victories on February 2, 2008, next year's de facto national primary.

Rudy Giuliani is GOP's Tough Guy

Yesterday's big political news was Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for the GOP presidential nomination. Why would a top leader of the Christian right back the socially liberal former New York Mayor?

Today's Los Angeles Times argues that Giuliani's cultivated a tough guy image with a combative style on the hustings. This tough love approach may be paying off, even with hardline conservatives:

With his intense demeanor and aggressive policy stances - such as pledging to "prevent" Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon or to "set them back five or 10 years" - Giuliani has methodically built an image as the toughest guy on the block, unafraid of looking belligerent in the cause of keeping America safe.

Though it isn't always pretty up close, Giuliani's demeanor seems to be working. He leads the national polls for a Republican nomination that many believed he could never win because of his relatively liberal views on abortion and other social issues.

As a counterweight to his positions on social policy, Giuliani has broadened his image, once narrowly rooted in his leadership after Sept. 11, to one that projects strength on many fronts.

The man who led New York City through the trauma of terrorist attacks has promised to keep Al Qaeda on the defensive, possibly even sending troops into Pakistan uninvited. The man who chased prostitutes from Times Square now casts himself as a defender of free speech for religious groups and a protector of families from crime, drugs and high taxes.

And the man who governed a Democratic city as a Republican mayor, staring down the "toughest labor unions that anybody ever met," is promoting himself as the strongest opponent to the Democrats' presidential front-runner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

On the campaign trail, some of Giuliani's rough City Hall edges are smoothed -- a familiar scowl has been replaced by frequent smiles and even a chuckle. But Giuliani has honed his own style of combativeness. As some in New Hampshire saw recently, he is unafraid to dole out tough love.

The article goes on:

Giuliani's success has exposed an unusual dynamic in the GOP primary race: National security and electability are trumping cultural issues. It is a dynamic that few anticipated last year, when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona began their aggressive courtships of evangelical leaders, such as the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.

The primacy of national security was on display Wednesday, when Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson endorsed Giuliani, citing Islamic terrorists' "blood lust" as the top issue facing the country and calling Giuliani the best equipped to handle it.

Though the former mayor's national poll numbers have not risen above the low 30s, he maintains double-digit leads over his closest GOP rivals. And at least some social conservatives appear to be increasingly willing to support Giuliani, despite disagreeing with him on abortion, gay rights, immigration and gun control, and in spite of his three marriages and his strained relations with his children.

Viewed as the strongest GOP contender and the most able to defeat Clinton in the general election, the former mayor is winning support from nearly a third of Republican voters who believe abortion should be outlawed, according to a recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey. Many rank-and-file social conservatives appear willing to shirk calls from some leading Christian conservatives, such as Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson, to respond to a Giuliani victory in the primary race by leaving the GOP and backing a third-party contender.

He leads in national polls, and surveys show Giuliani running relatively strong in several key early-voting states, including conservative South Carolina. While Giuliani is running second in New Hampshire behind Romney, a recent Rasmussen Reports survey showed that 77% of likely GOP primary voters in that state viewed Giuliani favorably - more than any other candidate.

This is all very interesting, but it's nothing to write home to mom about. Giuliani's still in the thick of a competitive race. Iowa and New Hampshire could be make or break, especially if Mitt Romney, or one of the other GOPers, builds insurmountable momentum with a set of early victories in those two key first-in-the-nation contests.

I like Giuliani, though. He's not my first pick, but his national standings are competitive and he'd give Hillary Clinton a good thrashing in the general election.

Will Rudy Be the Republican Nominee?

The Economist has an analysis of Rudolf Giuliani's presidential campaign. Will Rudy take on Hillary? Here's a key snippet:

Mr Giuliani's reputation as tough on terrorists rests largely on his unflappability after the World Trade Centre was attacked. That is a less substantial achievement than rolling back crime or welfare, but it is what television viewers remember about the man who has been dubbed “America's mayor”. He adds to his reputation with ferocious displays of hawkishness, vowing to remain “on offence” in Iraq and promising unflinching support for Israel. One of his foreign-policy advisers, Norman Podhoretz, urges President George Bush to bomb Iran's nuclear sites as soon as practically possible—though Mr Giuliani does not go so far.

Mr Giuliani's hawkishness could be a vital factor in his struggle to win over Republicans who think him too soft on social issues such as abortion. Many pro-life conservatives are also pro-Israel and convinced that Christendom is threatened by “Islamofascists”. Mr Giuliani addresses such audiences with deference. He admits to being an imperfect candidate. He admits that they will not always agree with him, but insists that they can always trust him. This is a veiled jab at Mr Romney, whose recent conversion to pro-lifery smacks to many of opportunism.

Some of these social conservatives are nonetheless so appalled by Mr Giuliani that they threaten to back a third-party candidate if he wins the Republican nomination. Others think that would be foolish, since it would virtually guarantee victory for the Democrats. But many Republicans fall into a third category—they are simply unaware that Mr Giuliani is socially liberal. A recent Gallup poll found that only 37% knew he was pro-choice and only 18% knew he favoured civil unions for gays.

This makes the race for the Republican nomination extremely hard to predict. As the primaries draw near, will voters learn more about Mr Giuliani and reject him? Some undoubtedly will. But others may not have bothered to find out where he stands on abortion because they do not think it matters much. After all, the president cannot ban the practice. The most he can do is to pick pro-life Supreme Court judges who, if confirmed by a substantially pro-choice Senate, might conceivably one day overturn Roe v Wade and hand the issue back to the states. This is highly unlikely, though, and most voters pay more attention to other issues.

For many Republicans, Mr Giuliani's chief virtue is that he has the best shot at beating Hillary Clinton. His boosters say his moderate social views could lure swing voters and bring big blue states such as New York and California back into play, at least forcing the Democrats to spend time and money defending them. Perhaps, but many swing voters will be repulsed by his hawkishness or his dodgy friends. (His third police chief, Bernard Kerik, is currently being investigated for tax fraud; were he to be indicted, that would be awkward for Mr Giuliani.)

Read the whole thing.

Giuliani's nowhere assured the nomination, and the article includes some polling data on voter preferences on both the Democratic and Republican candidates. As I've noted before, Giuliani's not my first pick, but I won't be upset if he wins the nomination.

The Emerging Giuliani Doctrine

Today's New York Times discusses the development of Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy, which is getting significant input from neoconservative thinkers:

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s approach to foreign policy shares with other Republican presidential candidates an aggressive posture toward terrorism, a commitment to strengthening the military and disdain for the United Nations.

But in developing his views, Mr. Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers.

Their positions have been criticized by Democrats as irresponsible and applauded by some conservatives as appropriately tough, while raising questions about how closely aligned Mr. Giuliani’s thinking is with theirs.

Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination.

The campaign says that the foreign policy team, which also includes scholars and experts with different policy approaches, is meant to give Mr. Giuliani a variety of perspectives.

Based on his public statements, Mr. Giuliani does not share all of their views and parts company with traditional neoconservative thinking in some respects. But their presence has reassured some conservatives who have expressed doubts about Mr. Giuliani’s positions on issues like abortion and gun control, and underscored his efforts to cast himself as a tough-minded potential commander in chief.

And while Mr. Giuliani, like other New York mayors, liked to be seen as conducting his own brand of foreign policy from City Hall, he had little direct exposure to many of the specific issues the next president will confront and is still meeting for the first time with some of his advisers to develop detailed positions on particular subjects.

Mr. Giuliani has taken an aggressive position on Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear program, saying last month it was a “promise” that as president he would take military action to keep the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon.

The article quotes William Kristol on Giuliani's neoconservative persuasions:

Neoconservatives said they were generally supportive of Mr. Giuliani’s positions and saw them as being in line with those taken by the other leading Republican presidential candidates.

“I would say, as a card-carrying member of the neoconservative conspiracy,” said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, “that I think Giuliani, McCain and Thompson are all getting really good advice — and Romney.” Mr. Kristol said that none of the leading Republican candidates “buy any of these fundamental criticisms that Bush took us on a radically wrong path, and we have to go to a pre-9/11 foreign policy.”

Then the piece lays out the elements of an emerging "Giuliani Doctrine":

The emerging Giuliani doctrine, which is being created through conference calls, policy papers, and seminarlike meetings, contains a number of main elements.

Mr. Giuliani calls for continuing the war in Iraq and building up the military by adding at least 10 combat brigades to the Army. He takes a dim view of the United Nations, which he sees as good for little other than humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, but wants to expand NATO and invite Israel to join it.

He would continue the Bush administration’s efforts to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa, but would tailor policy toward Africa to emphasize trade over aid.

If there is a central tenet to his thinking, it may be that the United States must project strength to keep itself safe. “Weakness invites attack,” Mr. Giuliani warned to cheers in a speech he gave recently to the Republican Jewish Coalition.

On the question of diplomacy, Mr. Giuliani makes it clear that he would impose a number of conditions before opening talks with unfriendly countries. In the Foreign Affairs article, he wrote that it might be advisable at times to hold serious diplomatic talks with the nation’s adversaries, but not with “those bent on our destruction or those who cannot deliver on their agreements.”

In a recent speech to the Jewish Coalition, he went further, accusing the Democrats of putting too much stock in diplomacy. “This is the great fallacy in this now very strong Democratic desire to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate and negotiate,” he said. “You’ve got to know with whom to negotiate and with whom you should not negotiate.”

The foreign policy education of Mr. Giuliani, from former big-city mayor to would-be statesman, has played out in a series of briefings and papers and calls.

I wrote earlier on "Neoconservatives and Rudy Giuliani" (for a full statement on Giuliani's foreign policy, see his essay in Foreign Affairs).

I would second Kristol's comment, that it's indeed great news that all of the top GOP contenders evince strong inclinations toward the neoconservartive foreign policy agenda.

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UPDATE: The Washington Post has but another article on Rudy Giuliani's growing list of top policy advisors, in this case Bill Simon, a former gubernatorial candidate in California, and the founder of "Simon University," a series of seminars featuring top conservatives and neoconservatives.

Rejecting Rudy: Social Conservatives May Bolt From GOP

This morning's Los Angeles Times reports that social conservatives will break with the GOP if Rudy Giuliani wins the GOP presidential nomination:

With some leading social conservatives threatening to boycott the Republican Party if Rudolph W. Giuliani wins the presidential nomination, the former New York City mayor sought Saturday to assure activists in this crucial GOP voting bloc that they have "absolutely nothing to fear from me."

Giuliani told more than 2,000 evangelical activists that despite his support for abortion rights and other liberal views, Christians would have a voice in his administration, and that, though he has not always been comfortable discussing it in public, faith "is at the core of who I am."

"I come to you today as I would if I were your president, with an open mind and an open heart," Giuliani said. "And all I ask is that you do the same."

Although Giuliani was interrupted several times by applause and some stood to clap as he concluded his 40-minute address, it was clear that he remained a distrusted figure among those gathered here from across the country.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an evangelical organization and primary sponsor of the annual Values Voter Summit, called Giuliani's speech sincere but said he could not ignore the difference of opinion on abortion.

"It's not something that can be paved over easily," Perkins said, adding that he had not changed his mind about looking elsewhere for a candidate should Giuliani win the GOP nomination. "My position remains the same, as I think it does for a number of pro-life conservatives -- that we draw a line that we will not cross in supporting a pro-abortion-rights candidate."

Read the whole thing. The piece points out that Giuliani may have a tough time winning caucuses and primaries dominated by voters skeptical of the former New York mayor's views on bedrock conservative issues. At Saturday's Values Voters Convention, Giulani sought to clarify his record:

Giuliani offered a laundry list of issues that he said showed "shared goals" with religious conservatives, such as his support for school choice and his opposition to the procedure that critics call "partial-birth" abortion. He pledged to veto any effort to roll back limits on public funding for abortions, and to appoint judges like conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

He reminded the audience that he fought pornography and prostitution in New York and that he took on the Brooklyn Museum of Art when, in 1999, it scheduled an exhibition featuring a painting of the Virgin Mary that included splotches of elephant dung. "It was just another example of the double standard that exists for people of faith," he said.

Giuliani referred obliquely to his troubled family life.

"You and I know that I'm not a perfect person," he said. "I've made mistakes in my life, but I've always done the best that I could to try to learn from them. . . . I feel my faith deeply, although maybe more privately than some because of the way I was brought up or for other reasons."

Conference participants later said they appreciated Giuliani's attendance but were not necessarily moved to support him -- at least not in the primaries.

Giuliani would do well to further publicize his strong credentials on the bulk of issues important to the GOP's evangelical base. Regarding Giuliani's New York record, Jennifer Rubin, in an American Spectator article last February, noted:

Pundits of all political persuasions have been chattering about whether Rudy Giuliani, whose name is invariably modified by the description "social liberal," can overcome the objections of many religious conservatives to win the Republican nomination....

If the definition of "social conservative" is merely a checklist of several hot button issues, specifically abortion and gay rights, Giuliani is certainly to the left of his principal rivals. He might give assurances to appoint strict constructionist judges and might stipulate that his support of civil unions is not the same as support for gay marriage. However, on these issues he is unlikely to win the hearts of single-issue voters who care passionately about a candidate's beliefs and not just the likely outcomes of a candidate's policies.

But the commentators and consultants may have gotten the questions wrong. The better, at least the more interesting, question is whether Giuliani can establish a new description of what it means to be "socially conservative." Perhaps to be socially conservative means something more than just fidelity to pro-life and anti-gay marriage positions. Giuliani has a convincing argument that he is an ethical or cultural conservative who in the end will protect the values that most conservative Republicans hold dear. What does this mean? It means that he sees the world as a battle between good and evil, and politics as a struggle between decent hard working people and elites who have too little respect for their values -- public safety, respect for religion and public virtue.

Read Rubin's whole piece. Giuliani's the guy who removed porn shops from Times Square, vigorously defended New York's aggressive policing against cries of "racism," kicked Yassir Arafat out of the Lincoln Center, and argued that fatherhood's "the best social program for ending poverty."

Iowa and New Hampshire More Important Than Ever

I posted earlier this week on the Iowa GOP's decision to push their party caucuses up to January 3, a date marking the earliest start to the presidential nomination contest in post-1972 history. Beyond citing the research of William Mayer - perhaps the country's top expert on the politics of presidential nominations - I didn't really elaborate on the practical significance of this year's extremely frontloaded primary season.

Thus, I'm pleased to report that Mark Barabak and Dan Morain's article today has a great analysis of the implications of this year's unprecedented early balloting:

For months, politicians in big states like California, Florida and Michigan have griped about their lack of influence in the 2008 presidential race, pushing up their primaries to try to diminish the sway of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Now, thanks to those efforts, Iowa and New Hampshire appear more important than ever.

The reasons are illustrated in the latest campaign fundraising reports, issued this week. The figures show a presidential contest that has effectively split into two financial tiers. One consists of Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, who are swimming in campaign cash. The other consists of everybody else in the race.

Despite the competitive nature of the contest, fundraising has proved more difficult than many presidential candidates anticipated, particularly on the Republican side. Candidates face pressure to score an early victory in Iowa or New Hampshire -- the two states adamant about voting first -- and then hope to quickly replenish their campaign treasuries to compete in the rapid succession of contests that follow.

Failing that, the also-rans, Democratic and Republican, will probably have to pack up their campaigns and quit before the vast majority of voters even have a chance to weigh in.

"Iowa and New Hampshire are everything," said Scott Reed, an unaffiliated GOP strategist, echoing the words of other political analysts. "They'll be like a slingshot for whoever wins and does well."

Read the whole thing.

This need for big, early money is probably the most important implication of the frontloaded calendar, and frankly I'm endlessly fascinated by current developments in presidential campaign finance (my defense of the big money campaign regime is here).

In 2004, President Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry raised $274 million and $253 million respectively (and that was just for the primaries, as both candidates accepted public funding for the general election). Total receipts are expected to exceed that this year, and Barabak and Morain have a nice graphic on the money totals for the current candidates' presidential campaign war chests (click here to see the graphic). Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have raised about $80 million apiece. On the GOP side, Mitt Romney's the most prodigious fundraiser, at $61 million, and Rudy Giulani's holding the second spot with about $47 million.

The lower-tiered candidates will certainly be hard-pressed to remain competitive as their war chests dwindle come January. The main thing to watch, though, will be how much each of the major-party nominees raise and spend in the general election. 2008's expected to be the most expensive campaign ever. But what matters most is how well the GOP does in funding their party's standard-bearer.

Personally, I'm expecting a tight race in money and polling, but in the battle of ideas the GOP will win hands down.

Neoconservatives and Rudy Giuliani

Neoconservatives are having a big influence on Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign, as this week's Newsweek reports:

Neocons can't help but slink around Washington, D.C. The Iraq War has given the neoconservatives—who favor the assertive use of American power abroad to spread American values—something of a bad name, and several of the Republican candidates seem less than eager to hire them as advisers. But Rudy Giuliani apparently never got that memo. One of the top foreign-policy consultants to the leading GOP candidate is Norman Podhoretz, a founding father of the neocon movement.

Podhoretz is in favor of bombing Iran because of the country's unwillingness to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. He also believes America is engaged in a "world war" with "Islamofascism" and that Giuliani is the only man who can win it. "I decided to join Giuliani's team because his view of the war—what I call World War IV—is very close to my own," Podhoretz tells NEWSWEEK. (World War III, in his view, was the cold war.) "And also because he has the qualities of a wartime leader, including a fighting spirit and a determination to win."

Giuliani clearly hopes this image, born of his heroic performance on 9/11, can carry him to the GOP nomination and to the White House. But is he really the candidate who will "keep Americans safer" if his primary tactic is to go "on offense" in the "long war," as he often puts it in his campaign stump speech? Critics will say that the neocons already tried that—in Iraq. Still, what's left of the neocon movement does seem to be converging around the Giuliani campaign, to some degree, because he embraces their common themes: a willingness to use military power, a tendency to group all radical Islamist groups together as a common enemy, strong support for Israel and an aggressive posture toward Iran. "He's positioning himself as the neo-neocon," jokes Richard Holbrooke, a top foreign-policy adviser to Hillary Clinton.

Among the core consultants surrounding Giuliani: Martin Kramer, who has led an attack on U.S. Middle Eastern scholars since 9/11 for being soft on terrorism; Stephen Rosen, a hawkish professor at Harvard who advocates major new spending on defense and is close to prominent neoconservative Bill Kristol; former Wisconsin senator Bob Kasten, who often sided with the neocons during the Reagan era and was an untiring supporter of aid to Israel, and Daniel Pipes, who has advocated for the racial profiling of Muslim Americans. (He's argued that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was not the moral offense it's been portrayed as, though he doesn't say Muslims should suffer the same.)

Read the whole thing. While the piece offers an (undeserved) quick and easy dismissal of neoconservative foreign policy, the artice suggests the reason for Giuliani's current frontrunner status - considering his social policy centrism - is his firm moral clarity on the terrorist threat.

Plus, that's an impressive list of advisors. I blog on Podhoretz every now and then (his YouTube making the case for bombing Iran is here). Stephen Rosen is a top foreign policy expert whose articles appear regularly in journals like Foreign Affairs and International Security. William Kristol, of course, is the founder and publisher of the Weekly Standard, a top neoconservative magazine; and Daniel Pipes is an American historian and counterterrorism expert, and founder of Campus Watch.

Newsweek notes that Giulani's careful to solicit a wide range of advice and policy recommendations, and while he's yet to endorse some of the more breathtaking neoconservative suggestions - like a preventive strike on Iran - it's nevertheless heartening to see such an intense ideological focus driving his bid.

For more on Giulani's international policy, check out his excellent piece from the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.