Keep an eye on those delegate counts

That was the advice to political reporters from Rudy Giuliani campaign manager Mike DuHaime and chief strategist Brent Seaborn today. "The first big treasure trove is Florida,'' said DuHaime, noting that Florida's 57 delegates will be awarded winner take all. Then comes Feb. 5, where a whopping 1,038 delegates are at play and winner take all states include the Giuliani strongholds of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware.

"We are the only candidate on Feb. 5 who has a large number of delegates that we essentially can count on coming our way,'' DuHaime said.

While careful not to imply Rudy is writing off or diminishing Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, team Rudy wanted to stress their longer term strength. Can Rudy go zero for three heading into Florida and still win? Yup, his campaign said, while touting his strength in IA and SC and suggesting several candidate could well divide up those earliest states.

UPDATE reaction from Teams Mitt and Fred is below.

From the Romney campaign: "Mayor Giuliani continues to hang his hat on national polls that show him garnering around 30 percent support, yet fully 100 percent of the electorate knows who he is. That is a very big gulf to have between the number of voters that know him and the number that actually support him. National poll samples are largely a reflection of name awareness at this point in the campaign. The polls taken of voters in the early primary states reflect the opinions of voters who are the most engaged and most informed about the candidates. "

The Thompson camp reminded us of some other delegate targets on Feb. 5: "...keep in mind Georgia’s 72, Alabama’s 48, Missouri’s 58, Tennessee’s 55, West Virginia’s  18 of 30 and Oklahoma’s 42 are also up on Feb 5,  so don’t cede Mayor Giuliani Feb. 5 just yet."

Comments

Those Iowans aren't stupid. They'll take Mitt's money and then vote for the non-flip-flopper.

[Maverick]

New Jersery? Y'all got spellcheck there in St. Pete?

I don't know. Iowa seems like fertile ground for the Bishop who baptizes dead people of other religions.

Baptizing dead people of other religions is so weird.

Why can't Mormons be more like normal Christians who merely practice ritual cannibalism at Communion?

Now, now, now folks… I like Judy Riuliani. It’s not often you get to vote for an incestuous, cross-dressing freak who exploits the death of innocent Americans for political gain!

GO JUDY!

2:09

You really think that your comparison is valid?

You compare a 100 year old mysterious ritual a 2000 year old Catholic sacrament?

You, my friend, will have a tough time when you meet St. Peter.

Nobody appreciates a flip-flopper who thinks he can buy his way into the White House.

I wore flip-flops in the seventies, does that count? I also smoked a lot of dope, and forgot where I put them.

3:55 Did you step on a pop top and lose them?

Geez, I sit here and hear you sling back and forth about cross-dressing and baptizing dead people and think to myself the practice of selecting the worse of two evils has gone on long enough. Why not vote for a guy with principals, dignity, the same wife for 50 years, no skeletons in his closet and oh... 8.1 million in donations for the quarter.

Wasn't it Z who said he couldn't take a candidate seriously until they raised 10 million in a quarter? Well Z... if you want a headstart then go to www.ronpaul2008.com or read a treasure trove of writings (not done by staff members but the man himself) go to www.ronpaullibrary.org

Just so you are prepared by Dec. 16 when all of us patriots who are sick of our country being led by neo-con, corporate sell-outs celebrate the anniversary of The Boston Tea Party by dumping a ton of money into Ron Paul's campaign. It is time we take back our country and the Republican Party.

People won't vote for L Ron Paul because he is short, mumbles, has no answers other than objections and is very, very old to be President.

I think Florida has 27 electoral votes. But with this Supreme Court, anything's possible.

I don't plan to vote for Ron Paul for the same reason I don't plan on wearing a conical hat made of aluminum foil.

But, if I did, I would recycle it.

Recycling sounds a lot like reincarnation. Why does everyone here want to piss off St. Peter?

The Romney response sounds like it was written by some loser campaign consultant. Maybe one of those Bain consultants he brought on board.

Well, if you dump $40 million into Iowa and NH and make courtesy visits to Florida, you are bound to get people to support you in the polls. But when D-Day arrives and the vote is to be cast, watch the numbers change faster than Mitt's flip flops. No one wants to vote for a loser. Folks want to vote for winners.

Giuliani Defends, Employs Priest Accused of Molesting Teens

By BRIAN ROSS and AVNI PATEL
ABC News
Oct. 23, 2007

"Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work in his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexually molesting two former students and an altar boy and told by the church to stop performing his priestly duties.

"The priest, Monsignor Alan Placa, a longtime friend of Giuliani and the priest who officiated at his second wedding to Donna Hanover, continues to work at Giuliani Partners in New York, to the outrage of some of his accusers and victims' groups, which have begun to protest at Giuliani campaign events.

""This man did unjust things, and he's being protected and employed and taken care of. It's not a good thing," said one of the accusers, Richard Tollner, who says Placa molested him repeatedly when he was a student at a Long Island, N.Y. Catholic boys high school in 1975."

Read the rest of the article here:

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=3753385&page=1