A couple of GOP data.

Two interesting things happened in the last two days that I have been wanting to mention.

Firstly, about a week ago, pollster.com maestro Charles Franklin offered a decidedly Beltway-contrarian, pessimistic assessment of Giuliani's candidacy. He noted that the long-term trend for Giuliani is just as bad as McCain's, but Giuliani had the saving grace of starting from a higher point. Nonetheless, the rate of decline is just as dismal.

A couple of days later, Giuliani's Director for Campaign Strategy popped up and offered a hollow rebuttal of that assessment.

What was interesting wasn't the weakness of Seaborn's case so much as the fact that he felt compelled to rebut the analysis in the first place. Seaborn probably (correctly in my view) sees pollster.com as "the go-to source" for quantitative analysis of polling trends. If the pollsters there determine that Giuliani doesn't deserve frontrunner status, media narrators will pick up on that fairly quickly, and then they will stop referring to Giuliani as the frontrunner. That would severely dim the luster of Giuliani's candidacy, and make future fundraising significantly more difficult -- especially considering that the Giuliani campaign has cultivated zero online infrastructure or grassroots donor networks to push back via blogs, letters to the editor, etc.

An enormous asset for Giuliani is the perception that he is still the frontrunner. The data suggest something slightly different: they suggest that yet another GOP frontrunner has squandered a significant opportunity. Giuliani's campaign has essentially gone from 40 to 25 percent nationally just as McCain dropped from 25 to 10.

Secondly, I was extremely intrigued to see that, after Romney moronically bashed Obama's "sex education for kindergarteners" (omg! Obama wants to pass out condoms to five year olds!! what a nutjob!!1), the Christian Broadcasting Network -- yes, that would be Pat Robertson's organization -- smacked down Romney's bogus charge, calling him a "kindergarten cop." (The "sex-ed" program Obama was referring to can be summed up as: "If older strangers try to touch you in private places, they are trying to molest you. Run away immediately.")

Thus, the CBN hates Romney (probably), likes Obama (remotely possibly ??) or both. CBN also pointed out that Multiple Choice Mitt approved an identical program while he was governor of Massachusetts.

On second thought, btw, I think Fred's decision to hold off announcing is smarter than I first gave it credit for. He wants Giuliani's aura to depreciate some more, instead of getting in the thick of political combat while Giuliani is still the (illusory and depreciating) frontrunner.