GIULIANI, BY PROCESS OF ELIMINATION

I don't know if Giuliani is winning or if everyone who could beat him is simply losing.

Case in point:

DESPITE SHOWING UP IN PERSON, ROMNEY LOSES NEV. STRAW POLL

SPARKS, Nev. – Ron Paul won the GOP presidential straw poll conducted by organizers at the Conservative Leadership Conference held at the Nugget Casino this weekend "by a large margin," according to an organizer.

Paul won with 32 percent, McCain came in second with 17 percent, Hunter was third with 15 percent, and "Romney was in the lower numbers because people came out for his event but they just didn't vote for him," according to organizer and McCain operative Paul Jackson.

.. Mitt Romney and Duncan Hunter were the only candidates to speak at the conference....

Nevada's an early state and Romney's running third there, according to a Mason-Dixon poll (it's Rudy 28%, Fred 23%, Romney 17%). And Romney's only 4 points ahead of Giuliani in New Hampshire, according to a Marist poll with a 4.5% margin of error (PDF). Romney seems on course to be elected president ... of Iowa.

Meanwhile, Fred Thompson has a bold new strategy: not campaigning at all.

Mitt Romney was in Michigan, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada and then went back to Michigan. Rudy Giuliani visited Florida, Michigan, South Carolina, Alabama, Washington and New Hampshire. John McCain went from Michigan to Iowa to New Hampshire.

But where was Fred, as in Fred Thompson?

Besides participating in his first presidential debate in Michigan last Tuesday, Thompson was missing from the campaign trail. The former Tennessee senator and star of NBC's "Law & Order" was scheduled to be in New Hampshire this weekend, but canceled....

Giuliani just looks stronger than ever. And no, Kerik's legal woes aren't going to hurt him -- I bet there isn't one GOP voter in a hundred who knows who the hell Kerik is, and if the most anyone's got is a Giuliani aide being apprised of suspicions about Kerik, then declaring him clean, voters are just going to take Giuliani's word that, gosh, he really wishes he'd done a better job vetting Kerik, but everybody makes mistakes.