GOP primaries: Looks like the NYC mafia mayor is out. Now it's the Mormon vs. the Christian

[kurth]

Tough choice. Must be hard to decide.

[Lucinda]

1. I wouldn't write Rudy off just yet...but God vs God is looking pretty solid.

[Rageneau]

2. HUCKABEE/DUMOND or ROMNEY/OSMOND in '08!

[bullimiami]

3. people are worried about hillary being divisive for the dems. that aint nothing.

huckabee, mitt and rudy all have serious problems with various winger factions.

[whistle]

4. Did Ghouliani withdraw?

[goclark]

5. Please help- did Booty withdraw?

[Progress And Change]

7. no, but each day there seems to be a new revelation of his corruption in NYC

stick a fork in him...

[saltpoint]

8. True -- each day brings new revelations. On Air America today Frank Rich

called it "the gift that keeps on giving."

[saltpoint]

6. The road for Rudy got rougher when he entered the larger arena and

found it too vast and way too pluralistic for his strong-arm macho bullshit.

He can put the squeeze on the windshield cleaners and the hot dog vendors and run the adult shops out of Times Square, but he doesn't have much to offer a pig farmer in northwestern Iowa or a long-term Yankee Republican voter in New Hampshire.

He doesn't have much to offer women, since his personal behavior with women has been so consistently abhorrent. His lukewarm "pro-choice" position is bested by even the most anonymous Demcratic Congressman or Congresswoman, and the Kerik link is just not the company winning candidates tend to keep. Even Nixon's worst pals like Bebe Rebozo emerged mostly after his narrow election in 1968.

He doesn't have much to offer people who are not frightened of imminent attack by "terrorists" and his 9/11 luster is fading by the hour much like a glob of ice cream on an August sidewalk.

He's gotten some mileage out of the hero/America's mayor narrative, but it's a double-edged sword and cuts him deeply in all other areas of consideration because it highlights what he is NOT capable of discussing, highlights the long list of issues he is NOT associated with and cannot deliver on. For Rudy, it comes down to:
"I was there on 9/11, but I don't know shit about the Middle East. I was there on 9/11, but I don't know shit about health care. I was there on 9/11, but I have no idea about how we might take better care of veterans." And so forth.

I agree with wlucinda upthread that he can't be counted out. FOX News still loves him. He's getting some positive press still, despite the sex-on-the-city revelations of the past couple weeks. But he's in a downward spin and needs some spark for the rationale of his potential presidency or his wounded campaign will begin to sputter and then finally drop dead.

He'll place no better than 3rd in Iowa, if that, no better than 3rd in New Hampshire, and the same in South Carolina, IMO. McCain could arguably surge ahead of him in New Hampshire, Half-Dead Fred in South Carolina. Three third-or-worse finishes leave Rudy kind of bruised and beat up going into the Feb. 5th primaries, and if that happens, "America's mayor" will have been outflanked and outsmarted by a creepy multiple-choice Mormon and a bible-thumper from Arkansas.