'Firewall' Goes Down in Flames

It's official. Giuliani will not be the Republican nominee.

He is down in Florida - this time to Sen. John McCain (earlier polls showed Huckabee leading here). According the latest SurveyUSA poll, he is eight points behind McCain in Florida and is in a statistical tie with Huckabee and Romney.

By now it should be clear to everyone that Giuliani's campaign badly miscalculated.

Yes, there is a calculus where he still wins the nod, but it is so unlikely now that his only real role now is as a spoiler.

So what happened?

Simple - momentum rules. Florida is too big for the kind or retail politics that decides the early contests and it is too expensive to effectively blanket with paid media. Quite simply, Florida is going to go with whoever has momentum and momentum is created by gains in those same early contests that Giuliani ceded to his rivals.

One more thing - Giuliani is also down in his home state of New York.