New York magazine has a
very long story about Rudy Giuliani and What He Will Do Next and there’s some Iowa introspection hidden in there:
And then there was his cockamamy campaign strategy, in which he sat out the Iowa caucuses, skipping a contest that riveted the world for a month, and competed halfheartedly in New Hampshire and South Carolina. By the time he made his infamous last stand in Florida, hoping that weeks of appearances at NASCAR tracks and Little Havana parades could make up for the ground he’d lost, it was too late.
Today, Rudy Inc. offers myriad excuses for the debacle. Giuliani says fund-raising in the crowded field was harder than he expected: “I wish I had figured out that we weren’t going to raise $100 million.” Giuliani also wishes he hadn’t skipped Iowa, a decision he attributes to advisers. “My instincts originally were, if you lose, you gotta go down fighting. You can’t allow yourself to lose a primary. I think I should’ve fought Iowa harder. That was the beginning of becoming irrelevant.”
It’s nice to see that candidates eventually Get It, even if only after it’s too late — you don’t have to win Iowa or New Hampshire but you have to show up in one of them and do well. Third place in Iowa and second place in New Hampshire might have been enough to give the Florida voters the courage to keep Giuliani’s campaign on life support.
The winner-take-all format of the GOP primaries certainly didn’t help him, either, but that’s another post for another day.
