For Giuliani: It's Florida or Bust...

....after receiving little love from his former hometown paper, Rudy Giuliani's strategy of running a 29-state primary campaign to prove he can run a 50-state national campaign might have possibly hit a snag in his first state of competition.

"America's mayor" is third in the Florida polls, where he's spent the last half dozen weeks campaigning, and is being victimized by the early bounces that Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and especially John McCain have received from primary victories in other states. If Rudy can't pull a rabbit out of his thinning hairline, his campaign will be over right before it was supposed to kick into overdrive.

As Wayne Barrett, Giuliani's biographer, puts it: "This may be the biggest tumble in election history - you'd have to look at Gary Hart for anything like it, and he had a blonde on his lap."

Meanwhile, with his back against the wall, Rudy reverts back to the one trick he knows -- talking about his 9-11 "heroics". Unfortunately Giuliani's greatest strength highlights his greatest weaknesses -- ignorance and stubborness.

"He did great things and some stupid things," said former New York Deputy Fire Chief Charles R. Blaich, who was a ground zero commander on Sept. 11 and later highlighted the handicaps that fire officials faced. "There's a lot there to admire. The problem is that when it came to a serious discussion about lessons learned, he didn't want any part of it."