Today Rudy Giuliani echoed Newt Gingrich and said he sees a Clinton/Obama ticket and says he will defeat them easily. There is something I don’t quite understand about Giuliani’s electoral math though or his thoughts about winning the presidency.

He has continually stated he is the only Republican with a chance of taking NY State & California. But a Clinton/Obama ticket would undoubtedly guarantee a win for the Democrats. I couldn’t possibly imagine California not handing a victory to Obama and I couldn’t see NY State not handing a victory to Clinton or vice versa.

I think most Republicans can easily spot that NY & California won’t be heading their way anytime soon. Frankly they will have a hard enough time keeping non-amazingly-left-leaning states. So why would they vote for Giuliani if his big plan is to take NY/California and he just asserted the liberal/moderate dream team of 2008 running against him? Because he thinks he can rally Republicans against Clinton/Obama?

Well obviously that wouldn’t be too hard to do for a right-leaning Republican. Giuliani on the other hand is liberal in most of his social issues and his Iraq policy is basically to keep going full steam ahead with the plan that is causing Republicans to turn away from the party (not to mention they stayed home from the polls because of corruption in 2006 and Giuliani has, shall we say, some interesting friends already from NY).

So Republicans face the prospect of voting for a guy they don’t like, on the premise that he won’t actually be able to net him new states, in the hopes that he will rally people in the few states who will undoubtedly go Republican while at the same time turning off far right conservatives who won’t vote for someone who is pro-abortion, pro-civil unions and has quite the marital history.

How does any of that make sense?

Meanwhile Mark at RedState wrote after watching the Republican Debate:

1A in the strength department was Representative Duncan Hunter. Hunter has almost solidified the Vice-President slot for himself. No other candidate on stage should even be considered as a possibility. Hunter is the man. He simply doesn’t have the charm and star power to be the nominee, but man does he have gravitas. Buckets of it. He is the Cheney of 2008, but with 55 electoral votes in his back pocket. A Giuliani/Hunter ticket might win California.

This might well be an even dumber idea than Giuliani’s reasoning. Asserting that Duncan Hunter, who is virtually unknown to anyone outside of his congressional district and who is as far right as they come, has 55 electoral votes “in his back pocket” is beyond asinine. If anything Hunter and his one trick anti-immigration pony would probably scare most Californian moderate Republicans off from considering Giuliani.

How in the world could anyone expect Duncan Hunter to entice ANYONE with the prospect of 55 electoral votes? Because he was elected in one of the few Republican congressional districts in California? Here in NY that would be like expecting Tom Reynolds to deliver NY State. Just won’t happen.

In short all of this makes my head-spin it is so ludicrous.