Giuliani's Doom

Some good points from Brendan Nyhan:

Rudy is the Joe Lieberman of 2008 -- his name recognition led to strong early numbers in national polling, but he's just fundamentally unacceptable to the base. People have mocked his strategy of waiting until Florida to compete, but what was he supposed to do? He tried to campaign in New Hampshire earlier but it didn't work.

I think the fact that New York City looms large as a center of conservative punditry despite the fact that approximately zero members of the GOP rank and file live there, combined with the fact that a large streak of disdain for social conservatives seems to run through the conservative elite, helped created an illusion that the impossible was possible. For my money, the smart play for Giuliani would have been to just straightforwardly say that he was a pro-life Catholic who'd just been lying in order to secure the support of liberals in Gomorrah New York. It would have been an innovative flip-flopping method, and I think there's an outside chance it could have worked.