He Sinks

War Room:

For a man with a public record as long and as checkered as his is, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been getting surprisingly little scrutiny from voters, who seem not to care about a long list of problems that might each have been enough to doom a lesser candidate. But Wednesday, two separate groups signaled that they will keep pushing to raise voter awareness of problems that could one day loom large for Giuliani.

First, there was an article in the Los Angeles Times signaling that the families of some of the firefighters who died on 9/11 are ready to go national with some of their complaints about Giuliani's pre-9/11 performance as mayor. There have been signs throughout the campaign that this might happen eventually. Until now, though, the families have been relatively low-key, keeping their activities for the most part in the New York City area and not launching the kind of blitz that might get them the kind of national media attention the Swift Boat Veterans got for their attacks on John Kerry in 2004. The Times reports that a leader from the main group, 9/11 Firefighters and Families, "met Tuesday with union leaders and political consultants, readying plans to set up a tax-exempt committee that would fund appearances and a media drive against Giuliani."

Elsewhere, an activist group called Survivors Network of those Abused By Priests (SNAP) confronted Giuliani and his associates in multiple cities Wednesday. SNAP was protesting Giuliani's continued employment of his childhood friend Alan Placa, a priest who has been accused of molesting one child and using his skills as a lawyer to help a diocese keep many more molestation incidents under wraps. SNAP went to two Giuliani events in Missouri, where Giuliani was campaigning Wednesday, and also delivered a letter to the offices of his firm, Giuliani Partners, in Manhattan's Times Square. In the letter, SNAP says in part, "It's time to put up or shut up about the serious allegations against your friend, Msgr. Alan Placa. ...

"You've said you think Placa is innocent. If this is what you truly believe, then you must act. As a citizen, an attorney, an ex-prosecutor and former public official, you have a duty to expose this alleged injustice that has supposedly been done to a professed innocent man. Bring forward evidence that helps to prove Placa's innocence. Explain why and how an impartial panel of grand jurors conducted a thorough, months-long probe and came to the wrong conclusion about Placa. File a bar complaint against the Suffolk County District Attorney for whatever excesses or wrongs he may have, in your mind, committed. ... Explain precisely why you believe that he's innocent. (Having known him a long time is no explanation.) Enlighten us as to why Placa's bishop (who knows better than anyone what Placa has done) has suspended him and kept him on suspension for five years now.

"You're obviously busy now, running for the Republican presidential nomination. But, if you honestly feel Placa's innocent, you should publicly explain why you failed to take any of these steps at any point over the past five years."

Barbara Blaine, SNAP's president, tells Salon that, though the group was asked to move away from the headquarters, they managed to hand out several hundred fliers to passerby.

Boston Globe:

His national front-runner status evaporating and his fortunes fading in the early-voting states, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani spent yesterday not in Iowa or New Hampshire - where his major GOP rivals are trying to create their own tailwind - but in Missouri.

As new polls released yesterday showed him falling to a distant fourth in Iowa and a distant third in New Hampshire with only two weeks before the first votes are cast, his campaign has all but written off Iowa while simultaneously cutting its advertising budget in New Hampshire, where the first primary will occur on Jan. 8, five days after Iowa. Even Florida, where he is counting on a big win, looks less like a sure bet. Also, a new national poll shows him in a tie with Mitt Romney.

More here about that sinking feeling....

And it gets worse:

Republican Rudy Giuliani was admitted to a hospital Wednesday night for flu-like symptoms, his campaign said.

The former New York City mayor felt the symptoms while campaining for the Republican presidential nomination in Missouri, and they soon became worse, campaign spokeswoman Katie Levinson said. The mayor decided to go to a St. Louis hospital and spend the night there, she said.

"The symptoms worsened as the day wore on and shortly after taking off from Chesterfield, Missouri, for New York the mayor became uncomfortable enough that our plane returned to the airport in Chesterfield," Levinson said. "To be on the safe side, the mayor consulted with his personal physician in New York and made the decision to go to the Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis for routine tests."

Giuliani will decide his next step Thursday morning, said his spokesmwoman, Maria Comella. He had no scheduled appointments for the day, she said.

HuffPo:

Giuliani's fall has been driven in large part by voters souring on his character. According to the poll, 37 percent of respondents view the former mayor in a negative light, the same percentage that view him favorably. In March, a month after Giuliani officially filed his statement of candidacy, 58 percent of those polled had a positive perception.

Over the last month, Giuliani has seen a wave of bad press. The Politico reported that as mayor, Giuliani hid security detail costs for protecting his then-mistress Judith Nathan, by filing them with obscure city agencies. Around then the Village Voice reported that a subsidiary of Giuliani's security firm had done work for a Qatar company that had ties to a terrorist figure. Even prior to then, Giuliani's long-time confidant and close adviser Bernard Kerik was indicted on conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and lying to the IRS.

The totality of these reports, observers say, does not bode well for Giuliani's candidacy.

"He's the old man in the sea," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who helped conduct the survey. "By the time he gets to Florida, there's only going to be skeletal remains." Giuliani has pursued a primary strategy that relies heavily on the larger, later-voting states. But even in Florida (which holds its primary on Jan. 29) he finds his popularity waning.

If there is one saving grace for Giuliani it is that no one in the GOP field has been able to capitalize on his sinking numbers. According to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, the five frontrunning Republican candidates are all within nine percentage points of each other. Romney and Giuliani register at 20 percent; Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has shot up the polls, now finds himself with 17 percent support nationally; while Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, and former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-TN, garner 14 percent and 11 percent support respectively.

And the poll is here.