RUNNING FOR TOP ALSO-RAN, PART II

I've said before that John McCain's strategy of focusing his attacks on Mitt Romney is nuts, and now two new polls suggest how nuts it is. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll has these results among Republicans:

Giuliani, 32
McCain, 19
Thompson, 11
Gingrich, 9
Romney, 9

While a new Rasmussen poll has these results:

On the Republican side, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) leads with 32%, followed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) with 19%, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R) with 12%, and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) with 11%.

In each case, if you add Romney's entire total to McCain's, you still don't have enough to beat Giuliani. Even if McCain utterly crushed Romney underfoot and won over all his supporters, he'd still come in second.

John? Pay attention to Rudy. Pay attention to Fred. Mitt is not your #1 problem.

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(Other interesting poll results: USA Today/Gallup now has Obama effectively tied with Clinton among Democrats and Democrat-leaners; it's just one poll and other polls have Hillary well ahead, but Giuliani and Romney already seem to be running against Hillary, and this may mean they'll ... what? Start using Obama's middle name in their speeches? And according to Survey USA, Fred Thompson's now tied for second with McCain in California, at 21%, just 7 points behind Rudy. Oh, and Obama and Thompson lead in South Carolina in the Public Policy Polling survey. Thompson has a double-digit lead; Obama's lead is 3 points.)