Nowhere to Go But Up

MyDD.com has a story on a Marist Poll of the potential candidates in the 2008 Republican Primary. Let's see how our governor is doing at this obscenely early date:

Rudy Giuliani	25%
John McCain	21%
Condoleezza Rice	14%
Jeb Bush	7%
Newt Gingrich	5%
Bill Frist	3%
Bill Owens	2%
Mitt Romney	1%
Rick Santorum	1%
George Pataki	1%
Chuck Hagel	<1%
George Allen	<1%
Undecided	20%

It looks like all that out-of-state campaigning hasn't amounted to much after all. The good news for Mitt is that polls this early are just a mix of favorability ratings and name recognition. The bad news is that if this is indeed the field of Republican candidates (something we can't predict) it looks like he may be squeezed out of the primaries early. It's not hard to imagine him being too conservative for the moderates who would vote for McCain or Giuliani types and too moderate for conservatives who would vote for Frist or Gingrich types. Again, a poll this early out is mostly just for entertainment value, but it does show that Romney has a lot of ground to make up if he is really serious about running for President.