Giuliani's Firewall

I wrote the following for a class, then had to go back and cut it by over 250 words when I realized I had completely overshot the mark.

Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, was once the front runner in the republican race for the presidential nomination. Throughout the fall and winter leading up to the start of the primary season he pushed his strong stance on terrorism and his record as "America's Mayor". Over the past two months, however, he slowly slipped into the abyss of his own ego and marketing coming up with a hair-brined scheme that would be his undoing.
This crazy scheme, dubbed "the Florida firewall", was a new approach to the primary seasons campaigning that many analyst questioned, with good cause. Since republican primaries are winner-take-all a few larger states, such as New York, California and Florida are all a candidate needs to wrap up the nomination. Logically Giuliani’s plan made sense. The high number of the stereotypical New York emigrants in Florida should have made it an easy win, and his high standing in New York state should have set him up to be a front runner.
In the time running up to the Florida primary politico’s seemed to notice just how bad Giuliani’s plan was. As of January 21st he had yet to have a strong showing in any state, Huckabee and Romney were at the front of the delegate race and McCain was gaining momentum. Also on Monday Giuliani was taken off the list of frontrunners on the New York Times’ webpage, being replaced by Ron Paul. On that day a new poll also showed Giuliani’s once substantial lead in Florida had dwindled to a four-way tie between the former mayor, McCain, Romney and Huckabee. Luckily on Tuesday, January 22nd Fred Thompson dropped out, which lead the Giuliani camp to claim a quick jump in the polls.
The next week, on Monday January 28th, a day before the Florida primary, word got out that the Giuliani campaign was running low on funds. Giuliani also told the LA Times that the winner of Florida would win the nomination.
On January 29th the Florida primary went to John McCain, who has now been crowed the de-facto republican nominee, just as Giuliani predicted. On the 30th Giuliani dropped out, endorsing McCain. More recently it surfaced that Giuliani’s campaign is still in financial trouble and in much more debt than they had lead people to believe.
The problem with the firewall strategy is its heavy reliance on the statistics and inability to take into account the ambiguous and all-powerful “momentum” that shows up in long policies races. As Giuliani ignored the earlier states to focus on Florida, where he felt he had the most chance of winning, he lost the free publicity a candidate receives when they finish near the top of the other races. As McCain, Huckabee and Romney won the other states they were featured on more newscasts and were the focus of more in-depth discussions.
While it’s been pretty well established that this strategy does not work it seems fellow New Yorker Hillary Clinton is using it in Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4th, effectively ignoring tomorrow’s Washington and Wisconsin primaries. While they claim a win in Texas and Ohio would stop Obama’s momentum they are not taking into account the momentum they are letting build up by letting him win more states.
Giuliani, now out of the race, will most likely campaign for the republican nominee and possibly attempt to get the vice presidential nomination, though he, as a more liberal republican, would most likely not go well on a bill with the also liberal McCain.

Indiana Jones...

These movies are amazing, and the latest one looks to be just as good.
The trailer is out today.