The Florida Primary or Rudy Gets Doped by his Rope a Dope

Florida turned into Rudy's Waterloo rather than his Rope a Dope and John McCain is now the clear front runner in the Republican field. Florida is also the second state, and the two largest so far, to not count for the Dems.

There is really little to add. Rudy's strategy turned out to blow up in his face rather that to be the sort of genius that I surmized a while ago. John Edwards dropped out in the aftermath of the results. The CW is that this will help Obama. CW hasn't been right more than it has been wrong in this election cycle so what it actually will do is to be determined.

It is clear that the entire nominating process should be analyzed after this is over. Rudy was pretty much stuck with an impossible strategy because in the end he had no choice. Florida and Michigan won't have any delegates count toward the Dems even though they will toward the Reps. Iowa and NH continue to play a role way more than they deserve in nominating the President, and no one can explain to me at least how these two states hijacked the process and forced the rest of us to bow down to them.

The race now comes down to Mitt and McCain for the Reps and Obama and Hillary for the Dems. Anything can happen on either side and events remain fluid.