Giuliani's Doom

Some good points from Brendan Nyhan:

Rudy is the Joe Lieberman of 2008 -- his name recognition led to strong early numbers in national polling, but he's just fundamentally unacceptable to the base. People have mocked his strategy of waiting until Florida to compete, but what was he supposed to do? He tried to campaign in New Hampshire earlier but it didn't work.

I think the fact that New York City looms large as a center of conservative punditry despite the fact that approximately zero members of the GOP rank and file live there, combined with the fact that a large streak of disdain for social conservatives seems to run through the conservative elite, helped created an illusion that the impossible was possible. For my money, the smart play for Giuliani would have been to just straightforwardly say that he was a pro-life Catholic who'd just been lying in order to secure the support of liberals in Gomorrah New York. It would have been an innovative flip-flopping method, and I think there's an outside chance it could have worked.

Comments

Something similar seems to have more or less worked for Romney.

Posted by John | January 29, 2008 10:22 AM

He was also lying about those two divorces because Catholics aren't allowed to get divorces either.

Posted by DanF | January 29, 2008 10:24 AM

I see you bought the NH fakeout, Matthew. Rudy has you media types reeled in pretty good, doesn't he?

I would have been astonished if Giuliani had won a single state. He was just such a weird little crush for the Republicans, and I think you are right that there was some insulation in the East Coast media. He never had a chance. He would have lost even if he had tried your strategy, though he might have gotten even funnier endorsements from some of the more gullible religious nuts.

Posted by sweaty guy | January 29, 2008 10:25 AM

That works for Romney, and it might have worked for Rudy if not for the whole Judith Nathan thing. It's pretty tough to run as a faithful Catholic after you've been running around town (and often at City expense) with your girlfriend.

Posted by John from NY | January 29, 2008 10:26 AM

combined with the fact that a large streak of disdain for social conservatives seems to run through the conservative elite

That probably needs to be qualified; most right pundits are, to the best of my knowledge, social conservatives who make their bones on the basis of various "culture war" attacks.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 29, 2008 10:42 AM

Well, if the catholic argument wouldn't work, he could have always have gone with
"911 taught me that every (non-arab) life is precious"

I still don't know why he didn't do this.

Posted by michesmith | January 29, 2008 10:43 AM

All the Rudy hype ignored a basic fact -- the GOP doesn't put Catholics on the national ticket.

At least not over the last 44 years.

The only Catholic ever to appear on a GOP ticket was Bill Miller, Goldwater's all-but-forgotten running mate in 1964.

Posted by Edward Furey | January 29, 2008 10:47 AM

I'll admit that I bought the Giuliani hype to the extent that I thought he was a real threat to win the R nomination. But in retrospect, I don't think any pro-life flip would have saved him. Rudy is just a creepy, freaky guy, and what surprised me is that even Republicans get that.

Posted by Jeff S. | January 29, 2008 11:04 AM

He tried to campaign in New Hampshire earlier but it didn't work

No, he really didn't. He half-heartedly campaigned in NH before things realy started to heat up, and by November was basically gone. He needed to really campaign in NH, to the end, even if he wasn't going to win. He still may not have won, but he was competing against McCain and he completely ceded NH (and the attendant media coverage) to McCain. Turns out to be a big mistake. (I thought that the tactic might have worked - who knew, since it hadn't been tried before - but I was just as wrong as the campaign strategists.)

Maybe it is true that Giuliani never had a chance. But we'll never know because the campaign tactics turned out not to work.

Posted by Al | January 29, 2008 11:07 AM

I predict that when Giuliani drops out of the race, he will blame it on 9/11. He will say something like, "People just couldn't get that image of me saving the world on 9/11 out of their minds, so when I started campaigning it naturally diminished my stature."

Posted by jim | January 29, 2008 11:08 AM

"It would be like watching Christ play foosball."

I forgot that line.

Posted by jim | January 29, 2008 11:11 AM

created an illusion that the impossible was possible

Add to the factors that you mentioned: NY being winner-take-all. It's pretty reasonable to assume that, had he even remained competitive to 2/5, these would have gone his way. That's a nice little handicap to have.

Posted by Brad L | January 29, 2008 11:11 AM

I think the problem was actually the scandals. Before the scandals, Rudy was doing fine in the polls, including with pro-lifers.

Posted by Dilan Esper | January 29, 2008 11:18 AM

For my money, the smart play for Giuliani would have been to just straightforwardly say that he was a pro-life Catholic who'd just been lying in order to secure the support of liberals in Gomorrah New York.

That's exactly what I expected: Either he'd say that his whole "socially liberal" reputation was a ruse to trick the voters of NYC, or he'd experience some kind of deep, massively publicized reconnection with his Catholic faith that forced him to rethink all his stances on social issues. He did neither, which just goes to show what a lousy political prognosticator I'd make.

Posted by Uncle Kvetch | January 29, 2008 11:20 AM

The only way you can say that Rudy has a "strategy of waiting until Florida to compete" is if you ignore that "He tried to campaign in New Hampshire."

Rudy Giuliani is not quite "fundamentally unacceptable to the base." In fact, when the race was just him vs. John McCain, Republicans prefered "Rescue 911". If he would have cut Mitt Romney off at the knees when he had the chance, Rudy could have been the anti-McCain candidate. As of right now, that role (and the base) is split up into multiple camps.

Since the media's love of John McCain has convinced them that he's not a conservative, I believe that it has convinced the Republican base of that as well.

Brad L,

Rudy supporters in the NJ Rep Party changed that primary's rules to winner-take-all, as well.

Posted by Aaron | January 29, 2008 11:21 AM

Surely a more realistic approach would be to convert to Baptist and fess up to having loved gays and hated babies until Christ changed his heart? I keep expecting Romney to do that.

Posted by aleks | January 29, 2008 11:28 AM

He still may not have won,

May not? He spent had more events in the state than anyone but Romney and bought more ads than anyone but McCain and Romney and barely beat Ron Paul. Moreover, during his time of active campaigning in NH his numbers were actually dropping, just like they have continued to do in Florida. No strategy could have worked because he's a terrible candidate.

Posted by Scott Lemieux | January 29, 2008 11:34 AM

Really? You think Giuliani should have claimed that he supported the murder of unborn children as a political tactic? And you think this would have soothed the religious right?

Posted by Mavis Beacon | January 29, 2008 11:34 AM

He spent had more events in the state than anyone but Romney and bought more ads than anyone but McCain and Romney and barely beat Ron Paul.

But, as I pointed out above, the ads he bought and events he held were before the race really started. By the time things heated up, he was gone from the state. ABC's (previously Salon.com's) Jake Tapper made the misleading point in the article linked by Aaron.

Posted by Al | January 29, 2008 11:45 AM

Whatever. Can we all just have a moment of seet relief? No possible end of this campaign could be worse than a Giuliani presidency....

Posted by lemuel pitkin | January 29, 2008 11:50 AM

Strange as it may seem, but I agree with Al. Rudy never really tried in NH. I think he might have had a better chance had he focused more on the early states, when he was the leader nationally. Even if he finished a respectable third in Iowa and New Hampshire, he might have had a good shot at the nomination. Now he is just reduced to being the butt of late night jokes. And I will be laughing. Aaah, sweet poetic justice…

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | January 29, 2008 12:06 PM

I think the fact that New York City looms large as a center of conservative punditry despite the fact that approximately zero members of the GOP rank and file live there

Follow the money, though, which IIRC, comes from the Upper East Side.

*

As for the issue of disdain of social conservatives by the elites: remember patronization doesn't indicate non-disdain.

Posted by DAS | January 29, 2008 12:53 PM

Whatever. Can we all just have a moment of seet relief? No possible end of this campaign could be worse than a Giuliani presidency....

I'll drink to that, LP. McCain's one scary mofo, but having lived under Rudy's regime in NYC, no R candidate gave me willies like the Mayor of 9/11. Good riddance.

Posted by Uncle Kvetch | January 29, 2008 12:58 PM

Uh, there's no rank & file GOP in Manhattan, but in Northeast Queens & Staten Island, yes there are, more's the pity.

Posted by Thers | January 29, 2008 1:16 PM

Uh, there's no rank & file GOP in Manhattan, but in Northeast Queens & Staten Island, yes there are, more's the pity.

John Kerry got 72 percent of the vote in Queens. I feel like the borough's Archie Bunker reputation has been greatly exaggerated. (But, yes, some Republicans out there and in SI)

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | January 29, 2008 1:21 PM

For my money, the smart play for Giuliani would have been to just straightforwardly say that he was a pro-life Catholic who'd just been lying in order to secure the support of liberals in Gomorrah New York. It would have been an innovative flip-flopping method, and I think there's an outside chance it could have worked.

It seems to be working for Mitt Romney.

Posted by Steve Balboni | January 29, 2008 1:44 PM

(But, yes, some Republicans out there and in SI)

Basically, Vito Fossella's district.

Posted by Al | January 29, 2008 2:02 PM

Whoops, meant to add - some of Anthony Weiner's district too.

Posted by Al | January 29, 2008 2:08 PM

Basically, Vito Fossella's district.

Fossella doesn't have any of Queens.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | January 29, 2008 2:36 PM

Vito's got SI.

Posted by Al | January 29, 2008 3:26 PM

Go to pollster.com and look up the NH polling data. You'll see Rudy! started dropping like a stone from Sept all the way through the primary. His decision to pull out in late Nov and concentrate on FLA was not the cause of his declining poll numbers, but a result of them. As Scott L. noted, the obvious conclusion: The more Rudy! campaigns, the more people flee his banner.

'Night Rudy! It's been real.

Posted by Jeff S. | January 29, 2008 3:49 PM

Go to pollster.com and look up the NH polling data. You'll see Rudy! started dropping like a stone from Sept all the way through the primary. His decision to pull out in late Nov and concentrate on FLA was not the cause of his declining poll numbers, but a result of them.

This is false. Rudy did NOT, in fact, "drop like a stone" during that period. Indeed, his support increased in September as compared to the prior month, and was virtually identical in October.

Here are the monthly averages of Rudy's NH support, based on the polls listed at Pollster.com:

June: 18.5%
July: 20.75%
August: 21.5%
September: 21.83%
October: 21.0%
November: 18.42%
December: 14.65%

As you can see, Rudy's support in NH was remarkably consistent from July through October, when he was really campaigning there. It was only beginning in November, when he abandoned the state, that his support began to fall.

Posted by Al | January 29, 2008 4:07 PM

"Rudy is the Joe Lieberman of 2008 -- his name recognition led to strong early numbers in national polling, but he's just fundamentally unacceptable to the base."

I could say that more than one national poll over the months indicated Giuliani's base was made up less of moderates (who tended to back McCain) than of Bush loyalists but some things will never break through the conventional wisdom.

I don't know if Giuliani is DOA - I think it depends not just on the outcome of Florida but how much cash he could raise over the next week and whether he wants to go on - but can you really say with certainty that his slide in national polls over recent weeks was the result of Republican primary voters getting to know him and not liking him or the result of Republican primary voters (in early states) *not* getting to know him - feeling snubbed by his unwillingness to campaign in their states?

It's a crowded field and there's probably no way he could have won more than a plurality in more than one or two of the early primaries but I'm unconvinced that he couldn't have had a strong showing at least in New Hampshire, Michigan, and Nevada.

Posted by Linus | January 29, 2008 5:38 PM

Nice try, Al. He didn't abandon NH until late November or early Dec, after the data you cite shows he started to drop.

From the very liberal NY Sun, dated 12/18/07.

Giuliani Begins Retreat From New Hampshire

http://www.nysun.com/article/68209

Rudolph Giuliani's decision to largely abandon the early voting state of New Hampshire and concentrate his efforts on the Florida primary three weeks later reflects an uncomfortable truth for the former New York mayor: The more he campaigned in the Granite State and the more he spent on advertising there, the more his poll numbers dropped.

Mr. Giuliani appears to be making a virtue of necessity by sounding the retreat in New Hampshire, where he continues to be outgunned by the Republican front-runner there, Mitt Romney, and where he has been beaten into second place by the resurgent campaign of Senator McCain.

(Emphasis added)

Posted by Jeff S. | January 29, 2008 6:00 PM

John Kerry got 72 percent of the vote in Queens. I feel like the borough's Archie Bunker reputation has been greatly exaggerated. (But, yes, some Republicans out there and in SI)

That's why I specified NE Queens. Though even there the political picture is changing, as it is on Long Island as well(in general), which has long shared a demographic profile with NE Queens.

Posted by Thers | January 29, 2008 6:14 PM

Even if Rudy! poll numbers were stable (they weren't), what matters is what his competition was doing. See:

http://www.pollster.com/NHTopzReps.php

Posted by Jeff S. | January 29, 2008 6:21 PM

John Kerry got 72 percent of the vote in Queens. I feel like the borough's Archie Bunker reputation has been greatly exaggerated. (But, yes, some Republicans out there and in SI)

No one is saying that there are a lot of Republicans in any of those boroughs. But the point is that those Republicans who are in Queens and Staten Island are more rank and file than those in Manhattan.

Posted by Glaivester | January 29, 2008 7:19 PM

"Nice try, Al. He didn't abandon NH until late November or early Dec, after the data you cite shows he started to drop.

From the very liberal NY Sun, dated 12/18/07.

Giuliani Begins Retreat From New Hampshire."

While I cherish the prospect of being mistaken for Professor Al I think it is important to point out that Giuliani's rise in New Hampshire polls last fall (September) coincided with a new (or rather first-time) focus on the state. What happened though was that after Giuliani caught up to Romney in the statewide polls Romney himself increased his own efforts in the state. Even when Giuliani was advertising and campaigning in New Hampshire Romney was
advertising and campaigning a lot more there.

Posted by Linus | January 29, 2008 8:20 PM

I did just hear some bad news for the kewl mayor type in Florida though. You could disbelieve or half-believe the late-breaking polls I just heard that the absentee ballots and early votes are breaking for Romney. Giuliani's Florida strategy put a big emphasis on both; that can't be good news for him.

Posted by Linus | January 29, 2008 8:24 PM