Dem President Would Wave White Flag>Giuliani surprise of the presidential race
The Star Ledger, Newark, NJ
July 27, 2007
The money in the presidential race may currently be on the Democratic side, but the closest thing to a big surprise is found in the Republican contest.
Sen. Hillary Clinton has dominated the Democrat race from the outset and shows no sign of relinquishing her lead. Her nomination, rightly or wrongly, is considered largely a done deal and no surprise.
But the emergence of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as the front-runner for the GOP prize is a bit of a stunner and has given an otherwise moribund race its only real juice.
According to the Washington Post-ABC News poll, just one of many national polls that make Giuliani the front-runner, he leads among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents because they believe he's their most electable candidate. (Coincidentally, Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents also think Giuliani's the GOP's best hope.) And he offers what Republicans polled said they prize most in a candidate: strong leadership, something they apparently associate with his role in New York in reducing crime and handling the city's post-9/11 trauma.
Democrats were found to put more store in a new national direction than strong leadership or experience, perhaps a cautionary note for Hillary Clinton, whose closest Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, has cornered the market on newness.
Giuliani's lead in the Post poll is a long one -- at 37 percent more than double the number of poll respondents who favor Sen. John McCain or former Sen. Fred Thompson, who's not yet a candidate but is expected to take the plunge any day now. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has piqued the interest of the media but hasn't done as well in the polls, trailing well behind even McCain and Thompson. Both men and women favored Giuliani, though his lead was more pronounced among women.
Almost half the conservatives and slightly more "white evangelicals" surveyed found Giuliani's views too liberal, but when GOP-leaning independents are added to the poll, the Giuliani approval rating on issues jumps to 54 percent. He's made the sale, as they used to say in Gotham's old garment district.
This is all early stuff. Giuliani could still stumble. And going behind the national polls to state surveys, he trails Romney in the two opening and critical states next January, Iowa and New Hampshire. A Romney sweep of those opening rounds would give him money and momentum heading into primaries and caucuses in up to 20 states, including some of the largest, next Feb. 5.
However, it's in just those big states, with the largest haul of convention delegates, that Giuliani shows his greatest strength. He leads the polls -- and not by small margins -- in California, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, New Jersey and, as expected, New York, among others. No candidate can lose a significant number of these states and expect to take the GOP nomination.
Giuliani has been, without question, the surprise of the race. He's managed this with a smart and energetic campaign that has let him put a discreet distance between himself and Bush while burnishing his own anti-terrorism credentials. As he insisted to Republicans in Manchester, N.H., "Democrats don't understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us."
A Democratic president, he said, would "wave the white flag ... put us back on defense." W could not have said it better.< |
