http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/carl-hiaasen/story/721475.htmlBy CARL HIAASEN
Up until now, Florida's most notable contribution to the 2008 presidential selection process was euthanizing the campaign of Rudy Giuliani.
You'll remember that the former New York mayor bet the house on winning the Florida primary, and he spent weeks encamped here while other candidates barnstormed other key states.
The strategy bombed. The longer Rudy hung around Florida, the less he endeared himself to voters. His poll numbers dropped, and he finished third in the primary. Game over.
Today, the man who trounced Giuliani back in January finds himself with a Florida problem of his own. As inconceivable as it seemed only a few weeks ago, John McCain is now trailing Barack Obama in this paramount battleground state.
Few of the so-called experts seriously expected such a turnaround. Florida had seemed like a lock for the Republicans, especially given the popularity of Gov. Charlie Crist, an early McCain supporter.
These days Charlie's wearing a rash guard, not coat tails.
A Fox News/Rassmussen Reports survey released Oct. 6 has Obama leading McCain here by 52 percent to 45 percent. Only a week earlier, the same poll had the two candidates dead even at 47 percent each.
And the week before that, McCain held a five-point edge.
Another poll, conducted in late September by Opinion Research Corp., has Obama ahead by 51 percent to 47 percent. One other survey, the Mason-Dixon poll, calls the race a bit closer, with Obama leading McCain by two points as of Oct. 7.
Experts blame the economic gloom for McCain's recent slide, not only in Florida but in Michigan and Ohio. The Arizona senator needs a surge, but the Rudy factor looms large.
Last week, the McCain camp unleashed Sarah Palin in Florida. She calls herself a pit bull but she's really just a pit poodle, more a yapper than a biter.
Her attacks on Obama drew rabid cheers from large audiences in Pensacola and Jacksonville. In Clearwater, the Alaska governor declared that Obama doesn't care about U.S. soldiers, inspiring one patriotic Floridian to shout, ''Kill him!'' Another Palin fanatic launched a racial slur at an African-American sound technician for one of the TV networks. These were not luminous, tide-turning moments for the GOP ticket.
Like all states, Florida has people who would never, ever vote for a black man, no matter how qualified he might be. McCain himself says he abhors bigots, but in a close contest he couldn't win the state without them.
Palin's public appearances here were staged at carefully selected stops where the crowds would be a Deep South brand of conservative Republican. McCain's strategists told reporters that Palin's mission was to rally the party base, in which case the party is in deeper trouble than at any time since Richard Nixon's ignominious exit from the White House.
While McCain desperately needs to recapture independent and undecided voters, Palin is out preaching to the far-right aisle of the choir. Not a soul who was considering voting for Obama would have changed his or her mind after hearing Palin's low shtick.
According to the polls, most Floridians aren't as star-struck as those who showed up for her pit-poodle tour. Forty-six percent of state voters surveyed by Fox/Rasmussen said they wouldn't be comfortable with Palin as vice president. Only 28 percent felt that way about Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden.
The bottom line is that Palin can't rescue Florida for McCain. Only McCain can do that.
Having given up in Michigan, the senator will have more money and time to spend here. The challenge will be saturating the state without turning off voters, the way Giuliani did.
Now lagging in the national polls, McCain has gone heavily negative with his campaign advertising. The big smear is a standard move in the final weeks of a tight race, but this year the tactic carries big risks.
Voters are worried sick about their jobs, pensions and bank accounts. Most aren't losing a wink of sleep over Obama's passing association with William Ayers, a radical Sixties bomber who later became active in education reform in Chicago and did work for the mayor's office.
Every time McCain or Palin mentions Ayers, Obama's camp can fire back with name of Charles Keating, a developer-banker whose shenanigans in the late 1980s shook up the entire savings-and-loans system.
McCain and four other lawmakers took fat donations from Keating and intervened with regulators on his behalf. For his part, McCain got reprimanded by the Senate -- not a bright mark on one's résumé in this autumn of foundering banks and financial turmoil.
Many Florida seniors might remember the Keating scandal, and Obama will be glad to remind them, if McCain continues to steer the campaign through the mud.
Giuliani wore out his welcome here because he showed himself to be out of touch with the worries and hopes of most voters. If McCain makes the same mistake, he could achieve the once-unimaginable feat of losing Florida on Nov. 4.
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