This from ABC's The Note this morning:
(For the record, DCSpectator falls under "Group One" below -- just so it's understood in the context of other posts...)
The Gang of 500's previous unanimous view that Rudy Giuliani cannot win the Republican presidential nomination has come to a stunning end, and the Gang is now cleaved into three groups of indeterminate sizes.
The first group still believes that Giuliani can't be nominated — despite the overwhelming lead he enjoys in all current national horserace polling. Members of Group 1 believe that there are 96 reasons that the former New York City mayor absolutely can't sustain his lofty position over the next eleven months, and his oft-discussed liberal positions on social issues aren't even the twelfth-most significant factor.
Group 2 contains Gang members who believe that Giuliani's chances are infinitesimally tiny and wee, but they are extant, if all the stars align, and if all the other candidates collapse and if 2008 is truly a different kind of election than the nation has seen in years and years.
Adherents of Group 3 — surely still the smallest of the trio — believe that the Giuliani campaign's mantra about leadership and the post-9/11 environment and the fact that one can now walk without fear from a Broadway show to a late-night dinner at Orso, will lead him to the nomination and the White House.
