Rudy Big Loser in Huckabee-Romney Fight!
Mitt Romney's campaign site has a counter that marks the days, hours, minutes and seconds before the Iowa Caucus on January 3, 2008 which kicks off the start of the caucus and primary season for the 2008 presidential election. As of Tuesday, December 18, it stands at 16 days befoer the fun begins.
The header at Mike's America marks a daily countdown to South Carolina's GOP presidential primary on January 19th . As of Tuesday, it's 32 days to polling day for the GOP's "First in the South" contest.
While those clocks tick away and in between holiday celebrations the campaigns of GOP presidential hopefuls race to get their message out and their campaigns organized.
Here's a look at the playing field as of today:
Huckabee, Romney Sucking Oxygen from the Room
But watch out! John McCain is sneaking up!
Fred Thompson had a good week last week with his refusal to partcipate in the puppet show of hands at the Iowa Debate. But that was last week. And it was sandwiched in between weeks where both Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have dominated GOP news coverage.
Mike Huckabee (campaign web site) continues to be the wild card in early 2008 contests. But his support reflected by the Real Clear polling averages in both Iowa and South Carolina has leveled off as it has for the other candidates.
The man in the best position to capitalize on any "Stop Huck" movement in the electorate is Mitt Romney, who is second to Huckabee in Iowa and South Carolina averages but maintains his lead in New Hampshire.
There's no question that Romney has had a couple of good weeks, in part because of Huckabee. First, Romney gave what was widely regarded as an excellent speech on religion at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library on December 6th. Next Huckabee handed him an early Christmas present by making the bigoted remark about Mormons believing Jesus and the Devil were brothers.
Lately, Romney struck back at the Huck for insulting President Bush with his article in the journal Foreign Affairs where Huckabee suggested that the Bush White House had an "arrogant bunker mentality." Romney demanded Hucakbee apologize to President Bush and has said in campaign remarks that “The language he chose is the language you’re hearing from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.”
If any other GOP candidate made a similar statement, it got lost in the noise.
It's clear that the Huckabee boomlet has given Romney a tactical advantage. Should the Huck-bubble burst he will benefit most. Monday's SC Rasmussen poll backs that up showing Huckabee has fallen from the lead and is now tied with Romney at 23% each. Meanwhile, today he's campaigning hard in South Carolina as he is in all the early states.
McCain Not Finished!
McCain needed some good news and this week, he got it. Building on an earlier endorsement from the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper he received a spate of newspaper endorsements in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Perhaps even more newsworthy was the endorsement of Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT).
John McCain made New Hampshire, which holds it primary five days after the Iowa Caucus, a must-win for his campaign. And from the latest RCP New Hampshire polling averages that doesn't look as difficult as it did a month ago. McCain has rocketed to second place behind Romney. A win, or even strong second-place finish would give McCain the "big mo" going into South Carolina where he has settled into 5th place.
Where's Rudy?
The big unanswered question in all this is where is Rudy Giuliani? He gave an excellent speech in Florida on December 15th laying out his vision for America and proclaiming he's "Tested. Ready. Now." It got some notice but was mostly lost in the noise over Huckabee and Romney. It may have been a mistake for Rudy to hope that Huckabee and Romney would weaken each other with negative attacks. It seems their exchanges have hurt Giuliani more than each other.
Rudy was never serious about winning Iowa, but it now looks like he may have been outflanked in New Hampshire by the surging John McCain. Rudy is reported to be scaling back efforts in New Hampshire and erecting what he hopes will be a firewall of support in Florida, bypassing South Carolina in the process.
That may be his best option as he still maintains a slight lead in Florida with Huckabee closing in and Romney beginning to tick up as well. It's always been part of Rudy's plan to use Florida's primary on January 29th as the springboard to victories in big Super Tuesday states on February 5th.
The question is, with all the attention going to contests in these early states, will Huckabee, Romney or McCain slice off enough Rudy support in Florida to prevent Rudy from getting that must-win throwing his entire strategy into disarray? Or, if that race is very tight, will Super Tuesday then become an exciting, nail-biting free for all?
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