Thursday, January 24, 2008

A Look South

We are days away from the Florida primaries and on the Republican side the soothsayers are mumbling their prognostications. The latest St. Pete Times poll has Guiliani in a distant 3rd behind McCain and Romney. From non-stop ads to bus tours from Tallahassee to Tarpon Springs, Mayor Rudy wants to make Florida his Alamo. But just like those hopelessly outnumbered Texicans, the bones portend doom for the candidate.

Unless...
Another thing to remember, Florida is the first — THE FIRST — state where only Republicans can vote for these candidates. Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina, and even Nevada allowed independents to vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses. These independent voters have helped propel McCain to where he is now. McCain can’t count on that support.

So reports The State of Sunshine - a Tampa area blog which usually has a good feel for Florida politics. In fact the SOS boys are predicting a two way race between Guiliani and Romney.

The strange visions of political junkies? Maybe. But remember just how right the big boys and girls were about New Hampshire.

3 comments:

Sara said...

Somewhere I saw recent speculation that Charlie Crist may endorse McCain before the FL primary. If so, that could push him over the edge since Crist is hugely popular.

Anonymous said...

I can count on one finger the number of people I've run into who think Giuliani is the best Republican candidate. Too bad he doesn't live in Florida.

I hope he does well enough to stay in, though. His presence in the race gave me hope that some common sense would be injected into the discussions of the GOP social rhetoric.

Don said...

Giuliani lacks charisma and he's beating 9/11 to death in an era where most people have stopped associating 9/11 with an attack on our home soil and shifted it to more about the quagmire in Iraq.

He's an object of bad timing.