On Tuesday, Pollster.com's Charles Franklin explored the question of whether Giuliani is the next McCain. Looking at Giuliani's consistently falling poll numbers, both nationally and in the early states, Franklin sees an "eery similarity" between Giuliani's trend now and McCain's prior to his collapse and wonders if there's enough evidence there to anticipate a McCain-like fall on the part of Giuliani over the coming months.

In the "he's screwed" column:

- Since early March, Giuliani's support has fallen by an estimated 8%. McCain's fell by 10% since January.

- the rate of decline has been a bit steeper for Giuliani than for McCain.

- Giuliani's national slide is also mirrored in the early primary states, as is the case with McCain.

- Thompson is trending up in Florida and South Carolina, while Giuliani slumps in those states. And his prospects against Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire are looking poor as well.

On the bright side, Giuliani's fiscal health is in stark contrast to McCain's and his national decline does seem to have leveled off. All of which leads Franklin to render this reasonable verdict:

So while the national trend may be stabilizing, the Giuliani campaign is confronted with serious challenges in at least four of the first five states.

Not exactly Chicken Little, yet today, Brent Seaborn, Director of Strategy for the Giuliani campaign, apparently worried about a self-fulfilling narrative taking hold, responded constructing his own somewhat disorienting counter-narrative:

As the race developed early in the spring, the race quickly but briefly, developed into a two-way race...As McCain's trend line declined Mitt Romney's slowly rose and Fred Thompson entered the race, [which] has effectively made this now a four-way race...After months as the frontrunner and the addition of a fourth candidate to the GOP primary it is notable that we are in roughly the same spot we were in before our bounce and when this was still a three-way race. In a four-way (or as your graph suggests a five-way race), a trend line from the first of the year until now, excluding our "announcement" bounce, is virtually flat.

Whoo. Well, it's not much of a defense, is it, but I guess makes his point that Giuliani is right where he wants to be, competitive with the rest of the field and the nomination is up for grabs. Notice how he stresses McCain's residual strength in national polls and downplays Romney's weakness in the same, and acts like they're all in it together because Giuliani's strategy, as Bob Schrum put it on Meet The Press on Sunday, "to shortchange Iowa and New Hampshire and go to Florida" is premised upon other candidates winning some of those early states.

While Seaborn projects a "what, me worry?" attitude, the very fact that he felt the need to respond betrays the opposite, but I'll agree with him that Giuliani's polling trend does not necessarily signal an impending McCain-like trajectory. McCain started with sky high expectations and never met them, while Giuliani has exceeded them when he's needed to, i.e. in Q1 with his polling and in Q2 with his fundraising. So he probably has another solid quarter to work with before voters and the media turn on him as they have McCain. The question that faces Giuliani is what else does he have other than 9/11, which is increasingly being revealed to be the facade that it always was (as his bizarre answer to a war-related question by the New York Times demonstrates.)