Where will Rudy Giuliani be spending Iowa caucus night, five days before the New Hampshire primary? Why, Miami, of course. Mark Murray of MSNBC’s First Read reports that “Giuliani will be focusing almost exclusively on Florida for the next three weeks, heading there on Jan. 9, the day after the New Hampshire primary.” Giuliani will leave the Sunshine State only for day trips to raise money in Texas and campaign in South Carolina and Michigan. After dropping from from second place in October to sixth place currently in the Iowa polls, Giuliani is quietly battling Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul for third place in New Hampshire and trying to focus on his Florida-or-bust strategy. In a December 31 memo, Giuilani strategy director Brent Seaborn defended the plan to lose the first six contests, win Florida on January 29, and then bounce to a dramatic victory on February 5, Super Tuesday. As Michael Barone notes, one “key weakness” with this memo is Seaborn’s statement that an average of polls in Florida has Giuliani at 30 percent and his nearest challenger at 17 percent, but the most recent RealClearPolitics Florida poll average shows: Giuliani, 25 percent; Huckabee, 23 percent; Romney, 19 percent; McCain, 11 percent; Thompson, 9 percent. Furthermore, no polling has been done in Florida since December 18, at which point in time Giuliani was fading, while both Romney and Huckabee were ticking upward. Wouldn’t this trend continue if Giuliani suffers six losses and the other candidates score victories? Another problem with the memo is Seaborn’s contention that there are only 78 delegates at stake prior to Florida because “Iowa, Nevada, and Maine do not select any delegates at their caucuses, but rather at state party conventions in late spring.” This is technically true, but Seaborn doesn’t mention that these caucuses largely determine the makeup of those party conventions. Delegates can only make it to the state convention if they are elected first at the precinct caucuses. That’s why the folks at the Associated Press will estimate tonight how many delegates would be awarded to each candidate based on the caucus results for each congressional district in Iowa. While Team Rudy would like to put a big 0* next to the caucus states, I think the media will probably follow the AP’s lead and estimate how many delegates will be awarded in Iowa and Nevada. So, if you count these states, there are 154 delegates up for grabs before Florida’s primary. None of the first six states award delegates on a winner-take-all basis, as does Florida with its 57 delegates, so it’s possible that none of the other candidates will amass more than 50 or 60 delegates before January 29. Yet even if Giuliani wins Florida, there’s no reason to think that he’ll lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday, but more on that after the dust settles in Iowa.
