The news coming from the campaign trail is saying that two presidential hopefuls are no longer so hopeful. It is being reported that both republican Rudy Guiliani and democrat John Edwards will withdraw from their respective presidential nominating races after their lackluster third place finishes in Florida.
On the republican side, Rudy Giuliani was the clear front-runner in the republican party a year ago, but his campaign never really got off the ground when it came to campaigning for individual votes during primary season.
Giuliani did not win any state leading up to Florida, but he said that that was part of his plan. Giuliani spent most of his time and money in the Sunshine state, saying that a win in Florida would catapult him to victory on Super Tuesday and onward to the republican presidential nomination.
If Giuliani had one terrible flaw in his logic for winning Florida, it was this. People like to vote for the front-runner or at least one of the top candidates. When Rudy basically conceded the first big states, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, he ensured that the voters in Florida would see him as no better than the fourth place candidate.
Since Mike Huckabee (Iowa), Mitt Romney (Nevada, Michigan) and John McCain (New Hampshire, South Carolina) had all won primary states, they could make somewhat of a legitimate claim that they were the front-runners, but Giuliani, not polling better than third in most of the states, could only sell hopes and promises, none of which panned out.
Reports coming out of CNN and NBC say that Rudy Giuliani will endorse Senator John McCain. If this indeed comes to fruition, McCain, who after his Florida win is already considered the front-runner, could be almost impossible to catch.
In other withdrawal news, John Edwards withdrew from another unsuccessful bid to be President of the United States on Wednesday afternoon. John Edwards had a very lackluster campaign, even failing to even come in second in his home state of South Carolina.
It is not known if Edwards will endorse either of the other two candidates, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, but his voters will be a new area of conflict between both of the senators still in the race.
Edwards becomes the latest democratic candidate to drop out, following Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich. Giuliani becomes the latest republican to withdraw, following Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter.
