Rudy!

Though I stand by my assertion that Fred Thompson was the least prepared candidate I've ever seen, I don't think I've ever seen a campaign implode as spectacularly as Giuliani's. Can you believe this guy was the presumptive frontrunner only a couple of months ago by huge margins?

Rudy Giuliani bowed out after going 0-4 in the early primaries and placing third in his last stand state of Florida with a grand total of 2 delegates. 95 fewer than John McCain at this point. 72 fewer than Mitt Romney. Four fewer than Ron Paul.

I think in Giuliani's case the problem was partly that he's just an a$$hole and partly that he had the worst advisors I've ever seen. I mean, who'd'a thunk voters would increasingly abandon an otherwise popular, well-known mayor the more they saw of him, if he spent 6 months nakedly exhuming the corpses from the World Trade Center wreckage and dangling them in front of the camera every time anyone asked him a question about anything? And certainly nobody could have predicted that ceding the early states (only after blowing a ton of cash in them) and not making a stand until frakin' Florida, the 5th primary, might be a bad idea. Ya know, just because praying for all the frontrunners to die in a horrible accident, henceforth known as "the Battlestar Galactica gambit," hasn't met with much success in the past.

Then again, I guess Rudy got this far by being well-positioned to exploit a tragedy...