STRUGGLING to regain his former eminence in Republican presidential polls, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, last week announced the formation of a “catastrophe advisory committee” to help him form policies on handling national disasters. Some of his rivals promptly quipped that he should start by investigating his own campaign.

“Either Rudy is a genius, and is about to defy half a century of conventional political wisdom,” noted one leading New York Democrat last week. “Or he has run the most stupid presidential campaign in history.”

As Giuliani set off on a three-day bus trip around Florida yesterday, his once-commanding lead in Republican opinion polls had evaporated, he was trying to save money by not paying aides and his campaign strategy of focusing mainly on big industrial states was threatening to reduce him to also-ran status.

It has been a terrible new year for the former mayor, whose leadership credentials - built on his internationally acclaimed performance in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 - established him as the frontrunner last year.

As recently as early last month, Giuliani was almost 15 points clear of the field in national polls; he was 33 points ahead in his native New York and 15 points up in Florida, which holds its primary on January 29. But a series of embarrassing political setbacks has knocked his legs from under him.

In one national poll last week, he plunged to third place among Republican candidates, with only 16% of the vote. In New York on Friday a Survey USA poll showed that his lead over John McCain, the surging Ari-zona senator who won the New Hampshire primary, had sunk to just three points.

Even Florida, long targeted by Giuliani as his ideal state to launch a winning campaign, is turning into a minefield. In a poll last Friday, he slipped into second place, eight points behind McCain.

Giuliani joked last week that he was lulling his rivals into “a false sense of confidence” and that victory in Florida would catapult him to the front of the race, a week before Super Tuesday on February 5, when 22 states will vote and the Republican nomination may be decided.

Yet his decision to ignore Iowa and to campaign only desultorily in New Hampshire has left him dangerously marginalised and running out of cash as McCain and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who won in Iowa, have grabbed the political momentum and media limelight regarded as crucial to a successful White House campaign.

“Giuliani is done,” claimed Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire’s poll survey centre. “He has run possibly the worst campaign of a leading candidate that I can remember. They made an incredibly bad strategic decision.”

As a socially liberal New York Republican who has a colourful personal history littered with ex-wives and gay friends, Giuliani concluded early last year that he would never impress Iowa’s conservative rural Republicans. So he focused his campaign on Florida and other larger states and duly finished sixth in the Iowa vote with a paltry 3.5% share.

He paid more attention to New Hampshire, a more liberal state where a year ago he led the Republican race. Yet despite spending 34 days in the state and lavishing more than £1m on television advertising, he was widely seen as being ambivalent about his chances and reluctant to waste his shoe leather on canvassing local voters.

Last week he finished fourth with just 9% of the New Hampshire vote and was fiercely criticised by Fergus Cullen, the state’s Republican chairman, who accused Giuliani of “phoning in” his performance. The New York Post was no more charitable, opting for a baseball metaphor to denounce Giuliani’s “wacko strategy of hiding in the dugout until the final innings”.

Several senior Republicans noted last week that Giuliani still stands a chance if he can capital-ise on his popularity among retired New Yorkers in Florida. McCain’s New Hampshire surge prevented either Huckabee or Mitt Romney, the former Massa-chusetts governor, from emerging as a clear frontrunner.

This week’s primaries in Michigan and South Carolina may help Giuliani by further muddying the Republican waters. The most recent polls show Huckabee a point ahead of Romney in Michigan and McCain three points ahead of Huckabee in South Carolina, with Giuliani nowhere in sight.

In any event, whoever wins Florida the following week is likely to go into Super Tuesday on February 5 with a strong chance of winning major states such as California and New York. The Florida winner “is most likely going to be dominating the process”, said Jim Greer, the state’s Republican chairman.

Yet it is not just poorly conceived campaign strategy that is to blame for Giuliani’s woes. The emergence last year of embarrassing revelations about the costs of providing security for his mistress when he was mayor was followed by a run of negative publicity about his family, his business connections and his health.

At one point he entered hospital after a crippling headache forced him to turn around his campaign jet in mid-air, although tests revealed nothing serious. As the national media began to focus on Iowa and New Hampshire, Giuliani found himself starved of attention.

Suddenly America no longer seems interested in Giuliani’s 9/11 exploits, the cornerstone of his electoral appeal. As the violence in Iraq appears to be subsiding, and with the economy rapidly becoming the issue of most concern to voters, Giuliani has begun to sound like a broken record when he talks of his performance as “America’s mayor”.

When he was asked last week about Hillary Clinton’s brush with tears in New Hampshire, he replied by recalling 9/11 and the emotion of the memorial services he attended. When he was asked about his failure at the Iowa cau-cuses, he replied: “None of this worries me – September 11, there were times when I was worried.”

With Giuliani seemingly flailing, Republicans are beginning to worry that all their current candidates are cursed with a flaw that Democrats can readily exploit. McCain performed well in a Republican debate in South Carolina on Thursday night, but he is 71 and unpopular with his party’s evangelical wing.

As a former Baptist preacher, Huckabee appeals to the religious right and exudes amiable authority. Last week he subtly defused the doom-laden terrorist rhetoric favoured by Giuliani when he told a crowd in South Carolina: “I want your grand-children to laugh when you tell them you used to put your tooth-paste in a plastic bag whenever you got on a plane.”

Yet Huckabee’s more radical views – notably his doubts about evolution – and his chequered fiscal and ethical record as Arkansas governor may prove liabilities against a strong Democratic candidate. With Romney and Fred Thompson, the actor, failing to make much of an impression on voters so far, the door has been left open for Giuliani: he will have only himself to blame if the Republican voters of Florida slam it in his face.

Video: Giuliani Speech in Florida

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