Rudy On the Brink
by Patrick Ruffini :: December 15th, 2007 12:13 amAs stunning as the Huckster’s rise and McCain’s slow comeback has been Rudy’s collapse nationally and in the states he needed to maintain plausibility for February 5th.
Let’s review what happened today:
- Rasmussen: Huckabee leading in Florida. Rudy in third.
- Detroit News: McCain leading in Michigan.
- Rasmussen: Giuliani at 19% nationally, down from 27% two weeks ago.
- Meanwhile, Romney is clearing the 15% threshold post-speech.
The fascinating thing is that the much-predicted social issue rebellion isn’t happening. Rudy had his huge social issues fight last spring. He was bruised from it, but by clearing the decks in Houston, he was able to recover. If the current shift from Rudy has any catalyzing event, it might have been the NYPD story. That makes sense on one level — voters can more readily dissect a personal narrative than a policy debate, even over partial-birth abortions. At the same time, Rudy’s slide has coincided with the broader Huckaboom, which has been especially punishing on the Mayor’s poll numbers. The likability-minded conservatives who kept Rudy at improbable highs for so long are finally jumping ship.
Perhaps this is the perfect storm, with a salacious Rudy story providing an opening for Huckabee to drive right through. But I think another big reason for this predicament is encoded in this press release I received from Team Rudy at 3:43 PM today:
New York City – Mayor Rudy Giuliani released the following statement on the President signing the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement Implementation Act:
“The Peru Free Trade Agreement is an important step forward in our nation’s effort to open up new markets for American exports. But this agreement is just one of the four Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that have been submitted to Congress. The remaining three FTAs would also open new markets to U.S. companies and should be approved. Congress should also immediately renew the President’s Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), so the U.S. can effectively negotiate and conclude other agreements that improve the standard of living for all Americans. Unfortunately, Democratic leaders in Congress have debated and repeatedly delayed votes on these agreements and have refused to grant the President TPA, placing partisan politics before the interests of American businesses and working families.”
We are 19 days from Iowa. And we are seeing releases about a United States-Peru trade agreement? When all the energy on this issue is probably on the other side? There is probably some Iowa-agribusiness component I am missing here, but… Peru?
That, in a nutshell, is Rudy’s problem. He is too wonkish for his own good. His answers at debates sometimes wander into the circular minutae. That would be forgivable if he mixed it up with memorable one-liners. But his only truly memorable performances in debates have been his on-stage muggings of Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, which displayed his classic toughness but did little to endear him to primary voters.
His “12 Commitments” was symbolic of a slow-burn, play-it-safe, run-out-the-clock frontrunner strategy. While each of the planks allowed him to make news over an extended period, none were spectacularly groundbreaking. And he had twelve, none of which we can remember.
His red meat lines are limited to fiscal issues (mostly taxes) and health care. While important (and successful in endearing him to the fiscal conservative groups), these are not voting issues in a Republican primary. His attempts to educate people about his New York successes brought out the 9/10 Rudy, not the Churchillian, larger-than-life post-9/11 Rudy.
I’ll give this to John McCain. I still find him utterly unacceptable, but the guy knows how to play to his strengths — the war, corruption/earmarks, electability, global warming, and even somewhat shamelessly plugging his POW years. That’s all the dude ever talks about. A similarly focused Rudy Giuliani would never even breathe a word about anything except the following: national security, electability, and the toughness to defeat the terrorists and the Democrats.
Even now, the argument from Rudy’s perspective is clear: he’s the only one who can win the primary and general elections. It’s an argument with considerable power amidst the craziness that is now the Republican race. Are we really, seriously going to go up against Hillary with a FairTax supporter who is completely untested in national politics? Do you really beat the most processed, inauthentic candidate in modern times with a slick Clintonesque figure of your own? Or someone like John McCain who only wins on loopholes (I got a memo from John Yob today bragging about no Dem primary in Michigan) and channels Al Gore on global warming?
Rudy can still win, in the sense that this race is so crazy open right now that anyone can win. This is not his political obituary. But things have pretty seriously slipped away from him in the last three weeks, and unlike Hillary he has no margin for error and never did. His down arrows need to flip to up arrows — and fast.
With 23 shopping days till New Hampshire, will Rudy finally find his narrative arc in his much touted (if oddly scheduled) Roger Mudd speech tomorrow?
Tagged: 2008 
rudy giuliani strategy
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Given the dynamics here, would a direct attack on Huckabee’s crime record be so far fetched…..it would be contrasting strength with weakness….
I may be deep into thee blue states but I think there are still enough R’s who realise the old “give onto Caesar” parable in the scriptures, and realise we are electing Caesar, not Christ. When someone comes looking to do me harm, preacher Mike isn’t the first guy I’m lookin to for help
It’s getting late to be worried about the “murder/suicide” problem, you can die wasting away at home, now can’t you?
I think that Rudy’s losing ground for a reason that has not been mentioned here (or elsewhere, frankly): because everything he says he’s gonna do: supply side economics, continue the war on terror, support for Bush’s attitude toward health care and torture and suspension of habeas corpus, and his penchant for secrecy - these are all a continuation of what we have now. He doesn’t realize, nor do you seem to, that Americans are fed up with this vision for America. He says he’s going to give us a more competent version of that. But nobody WANTS that anymore. Not even Republicans (at least the ones who make less than 100,000 per year). On top of that, he’s a nasty bastard who didn’t even love his kids enough to keep his mistreatment of their mother out of the press, and instead actually flaunted it THROUGH the use of the press. Yeah, he can’t get things done. But did it ever occur to anybody that what he WANTS to get done, the vast majority of us are fed up with?
oops, where I said, “can’t get things done” I meant CAN get things done.
Charlie, you sound like a Democrat, or a Ron Paul supporter. The vast majority of the GOP wants supply-side economics, offense against our enemies, health savings accounts, etc.
I want someone to finally pass social security reform, to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, to legalize drilling in ANWR, to finally pass tort reform, to reform the tax code, to scare the Iranians, and to keep us safe, even if it involves a dab of waterboarding.
Rudy is: Bush + fiscal conservatism + more brains + better communications skills + more experience + an ability to bang heads as necessary. I think Amerians would vote for that in large numbers.
My take on what Rudy has done wrong:
* He has been running a 50 state campaign, but not a national campaign. I doubt he’s courted National Review, the Weekly Standard, Instapundit.com, Rush Limbaugh, or been on The View (like Ron Paul!) Instead of meeting 50 people at a diner, he could go to a lowly website like polipundit.com and get 1,000 to 10,000 to read an interview.
* He hasn’t been taking advantage of the Internet. Fred Thompson’s best day in the whole campaign was his retort to Michael Moore. Rudy hasn’t done anything like that.
* He hasn’t really courted the conservatives. He’s didn’t explain his lawsuit against gun manufacturers when we went to the NRA, and took a long time to say that he supported the Hyde amendment wrt abortion. He would say as little as possible about the things people find troubling, instead of getting it out in the open. He’s really done very little to explain his troubling positions to conservatives. After all this campaigning, many still think he is pro-abortion and anti-gun. Those characterizations are so simple as to be false, but he’s not done a good job clarifying!
* He gets lost in the debates. He is smart and wonkish as h*ll, but that gets lost in the 60 seconds. (For an example of his wonkishness you can find all over youtube, check this video out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe1AkJFe4D0) National Review has criticized Mitt many times for being superficial, like this from Rich Lowry, criticizing a 50 minute address by Mitt: “The rest of his foreign policy stuff—when he talked about Iran and the broader war—felt very shaky and about an inch deep. His account of how he came to change his view on abortion—through the issue of stem-cell research—isn’t very compelling and he would probably be better off not talking about it at all. Fairly or not, people aren’t going to believe it.”
I have read a bunch of quotes like this!! Rudy is much more substantive than Mitt and Huck, but the debates don’t allow him to demonstrate that. He should have been pushing harder for more substantive debates, earlier.
* Rudy spent too much time talking about 9/11 and New York. He has fixed this, but he has a tricky situation: he needs to talk about how he, not Huck or Mitt, is the one who cut taxes, but do this without invoking NY. By talking about NY so much at the beginning, he’s painted himself in a corner here.
* He didn’t contrast himself with the candidates enough. I think his wonkishness, that he’s built out a full campaign staff and he’s ready to talk about so many more issues that his top competitors doesn’t show. I think in one paragraph, he could put together a short and complete take down of Mitt, but he’s never done that. He’s nipped at him for taxes one debate, for immigration the next.
* Many people think that Mitt, for example, could win the general election in 2008. He hasn’t emphasized that he is by far a better candidate for moderates.
* I’m sure others come to mind, but I’ll stop for now.
I’ve put together a *devastating* list of quotes about Mitt Romney from National Review, and I found these in only a few minutes of searching their archives.
I’d rather not continue to spam this website, so I’ve put the list here. I’d be curious to see what others think of it.
http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?p=35
“That, in a nutshell, is Rudy’s problem. He is too wonkish for his own good.”
No, his problem is that he represents the corporate wing of the party, and none other, and is increasingly being seen to do so.
Face the facts, people. Rudy is no conservative. Not a judicial conservative, not a social conservative, not a small government conservative, not a fiscal conservative. If he was running in the Democratic Party he’d be a worthwhile candidate. In the GOP, he’s a fish out of water.
“he needs to talk about how he, not Huck or Mitt, is the one who cut taxes”
That’ll be some trick, coming from the man who opposed George Pataki because he was worried that he would cut taxes.
A link for you.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/giulianis_tax_puffery.htm
what we have here is the old “forest for the trees” problem….and the previous posts here are examples thereto
Obviously all of the candidates have missteps on one conservative bonafide or another.
Giuliani has spent so much time discussing the trees he failed to explain how great his forest was. And when the best sales people for this cause were his constituents, he’s run a campaign that failed to utilize this resource effectively
Let’s consider this fact. McCain succeeded Barry Goldwater. Huck succeeded Bill Clinton. Mitt succeeded Jane Swift. Fred succeeded some warm body that replaced Al Gore.
Rudy replaced David Dinkins. The task he had to deal with was an order of magnitude greater than his peers. Now, one could argue that being more lenient on crime than Bill Clinton was an accomplishment in Ark., but it is not one that commends one to many conservatives
Romney’s problem is that no one quite trusts him because he has flipped-flopped. Giuliani’s problem is that no one quite trusts him because he hasn’t.
Giuliani has been running this whole time on little more than name recognition. He’s never been a conservative Republican and isn’t believable as one.
Huckabee, on the other hand, is a lightweight. So it looks like it’s coming down to Huckabee and Romney. Huckabee is sincere, but out of his league. Romney seems to be more capable but capable of what? Would he actually follow the conservative agenda when he got elected or would he turn out to be another George Bush giving reckless spending at home and reckless interventionism abroad?
Egged on by the MSM, conservatives continue to focus on their standard issues which (immigration excepted) will not count a lot in the next 5 years. With regard to guns, gays and abortion nothing much will change either way in the next 5 years.
I´m for Rudy because my concerns are energy (including nuclear power), Iran, terrorism, tort reform, health care, spending and getting the federal bureacracy under control, especially the CIA and State. All issues where Rudy is on the right side, outspoken and unafraid. On account of the security issue alone he will also be good on immigration.
That he is not a sentimental do-gooder is a plus in my eyes. The last thing I want is another “compassionate” blue blood conservative who tries to get along with Ted Kennedy.
Rudy is pulling out of New Hampshire, the Politico reports today. His national strategy is starting to look very poor.
He is now dependent on Huckabee winning Iowa, and McCain winning New Hampshire, and a mess in South Carolina(Thompson winning?).
It is never good for a candidate if he is relying on other candidates to perform. Its a risk that a frontrunner should never have to take…
What has Mitt ever done in his political life, or in the private sector that would leave you to believe he would spend like a drunken sailor like GWB? Nothing!
And this “flip-flopping” thing has to go. I was a moderate liberal once, then i grew up. Mitt stood against value issues in Massachusetts (where I am from) that left him unpopular with the “Cambridgites”.
Mitt brings into the 2008 race:
1) Hope- his message is clear on the prosperity of the US. In the general election, you will not hear Hillary Rotten Clinton speaking about how great this nation we live in is. Her’s is a message of guilt. Mitt’s is one of pride of being in the greatest nation that ever was.
2) Dignity- this is a man that has nothing to hide. Imagine 4 (hopefully 
years no scandel. No broads on the side, no bribery, no selling national security secrets for campaign contributions, no having your former friends “offed” sitting in their car and calling it suicide.
Mitt will be the next POTUS, if not……god help us.
My only issue in this election is illegal immigration, and
I will not vote for America’s Sanctuary City Mayor.
You don’t think the Huckaboom has anything to do with social issues? I think a lot of it is about what someone (I forget who) on NRO said a while back: Social conservatives got fed up with hearing their issues put down as unimportant, and they’re pushing back. I think a “social issues rebellion” is a very big part of this.
I certainly understand the concerns about Huckabee, and don’t consider myself a supporter of his at this point. But I also understand where this impulse is coming from (which is why I’m not and never have been a Giuliani supporter either).
My main issue in this election is illegal immigration, and
I will not vote for Governor who had 6 Sanctuary Cities in his State and increased State support of them and who hired illegals at his mansion for a year AFTER he learned about them being illegal.
I would not also vote for Governor during who’s term in office murders went up, but auto theft went down and that allowed him to claim that violent crimes went down. I would not vote for the person who is “tearful” on TV two days in a row. We already had a biting lips, tearful President.
I would not also vote for the Governor who presided over the worst waste project, that tunnel that already caused at least one death.
I would not vote for Romney.
Patrick;
Rudy has little to worry about. Even if he doesn’t pull in the big victory in New Hampshire, by sheer name-power he’ll be able to plow through anything Mike Huckabee is cooking up right now. Huck is coming off as a bit greasy, and that will ruin him eventually. Mitt still seems to be in the game. Can’t say I’m keen on anyone else making much of an impact from this point on, though.