Red Sox Flip Flop Dooms Giuliani in Republican Race

“I will be rooting for the Red Sox…you won the division and we lost. Somehow it makes me feel better if the team that was ahead of the Yankees wins the World Series, because then I feel like, well, we’re not that bad.”

-Former New York Mayor and Die-Hard Yankee Fan Rudy Giuliani on campaign trail in New Hampshire (Red Sox country)


When the New York Post reported Rudy’s BoSox claim, it was October 23rd and he was leading the national polls and well ahead in big pre-Super Tuesday states like Florida. A Quinnipiac University Poll had Giuliani at 30 percent and John McCain at 14 percent. It also showed him beating Hillary 46-43 and Obama 47-40. In the final outcome on January 29th, Florida was the guillotine for the former New York Mayor’s dumb all-or-nothing campaign strategy which bet it all on a victory in the Sunshine State.

As you know, it didn’t work, and he placed a very distant third (14.6%) to winner John McCain (36%) and runner-up Mitt Romney (31.1%). What happened? There were no big blow-ups, no Dean-like screams, no floosies. Some pundits will complain that the New York Times pulled a front page hit job on him every other day and he got clobbered by Tim Russert on Meet the Press. He also looked stupid taking a phone call from his wife in the middle of an NRA speech – an attempt to look like a family man (or something), though it came across as staged and rude.

But let’s face it, most readers of the Times and most members of the NRA weren’t going to give Rudy their vote anyway. So what really happened? The Red Sox flip-flop is what happened. Rudy’s whole thing was that he was a foreign policy hawk, a national security strongman, a man who may be unlikable, but whose backbone was strong. The Red Sox flip-flop brought his entire character into question. For sports fans (and especially Boston and Yankees fans) this infidelity was tantamount to saying, “If America loses in Iraq, I hope Al-Qaeda takes over the world so at least we lost to the best.”

Suddenly Republicans started to question Rudy's meddle in the face of evil. And once they began to do that, McCain looked like a much more attractive candidate. These guys were fighting for the same national security votes, but McCain didn’t switch alliances because it was politically convenient. McCain also didn’t have questions about shady business dealings or questions about public money paying for his mistress’s limo rides. McCain was willing to say the hard things that needed to be said (though it cost him in Michigan) and primary voters trusted him even if they disagreed with him.

It seems like a small thing, but sometimes these little details completely affect the brand image that voters conjure when pulling the lever in the voting booth. I’m curious to see what happens next time Rudy shows up at a Yankees game. He might fare worse than he did in the Republican Primary.