September 20, 2007

Fred Ahead

Bill Quick says, "This race is between Giuliani and Thompson, and Giuliani is losing."

Is that true? Well, consider the latest poll in Wisconsin: Rudy Giuliani leads at 28 percent. Thompson is in second place at 24 percent and, as Quick points out, Fred hasn't even been to Wisconsin yet.

Something I found almost as interesting in the Wisconsin poll data: John McCain and Mitt Romney are in single digits - 8 percent and 7 percent, respectively - while non-candidate Newt Gingrich is at six percent. Two major-league candidates who have raised and spent millions aren't even leading a non-candidate by a margin bigger than the poll's 3-point margin of error.

The race for the Republican presidential nomination is now a two-man race and if your first name isn't Rudy or Fred you're not in it.

Long before Fred Thompson officially entered the race I predicted that when he did it would transform the race into a two-man contest between himself and Giuliani, with the two of them leading the rest of the field by at least 10 points. The Wisconsin poll shows that, if anything, I was too conservative in that prediction. This thing is over. The nominee giving the acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention next year will be Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani.

McCain, Romney, Huckabee and the rest of the field just haven't admitted it yet.