My latest for the Guardian is on Rudy Giuliani’s semi-retreat in New Hampshire. I had a chance to cover a Giuliani appearance in Durham, N.H., yesterday. I’ve got more — including pictures — and will try to post something later today or tomorrow.
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OK. Rudy might have a chance.
His big night, really, is next Monday, leading old S.C. around by the nose. Let’s see what the jolly elf packs in the bag for him.— Larz
A few lessons to be learned from Giuliani’s collapse and the eventual end of his campaign, which will happen. First, a presidential candidate can’t run in the primaries on fear. In primaries, voters don’t want to be fearful; they want to be hopeful. Virtually Giuliani’s entire campaign has been about fear … and very little hope. Second, national polls don’t matter, for the millionth time. Giuliani has been leading in national polls for almost the entire year. But, those polls don’t matter. It’s the early states – and later, the state by state polls – which matter. While consistently leading in the national polls, he has been topsy-turvy in most of the early state polls.Third, not everyone is Bill Clinton. If you have baggage – and I mean, BAGGAGE, like drug allegations, cheating on your wife/wives, even maybe rape, like Clinton had – in your background, you are never going to be president. It happened only once and it probably won’t happen again. The media is just too much these days. Even citizens are the media now. Nothing is going to get by them.
By “free-market nostrums,” don’t you mean a bunch of crap that is demonstrably untrue?
“National polls don’t matter.” But in the GOP, they do. No frontrunner two years prior to an election has failed to win the nomination, since the Eisenhower administration. The Rudy collapse is for all intents unprecedented in the Republican party.