Rudy’s campaign bus on the fast track to nowhere in Florida

Word on the skreet is that Rudy is going down. In the polls, that is.

In Florida, a new poll shows McCain and Romney neck-and-neck for the lead, with 25 percent and 23 percent, while Giuliani and Mike Huckabee trail at 15 percent. More than one-fourth of the likely voters surveyed between Sunday and Tuesday 27 percent said they still may change their minds. The poll was sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, The Miami Herald and Bay News 9.

Another survey, by Mason-Dixon and reported Thursday, showed Romney with 30 percent and McCain with 26 percent, while Giuliani had 18.

The ferret-faced former mayor is already backing away from his vow to win the Sunshine State, and downplaying its importance to his overall campaign. What usually follows such long-view, optimistic pronouncements is a concession speech.

Rudy’s campaign stops are growing increasingly like jokes that take so long to tell that by the time you hear the punchline you’ve forgotten the build-up. Or, to put it another way:

“Everywhere this guy has gone, he’s faded,” said GOP strategist Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster…

Giuliani faced crowds that were a bit flat and small earlier this week. He got polite applause in a large but half-empty community hall in Sun City Center, where retirement is the local industry. And only a few dozen people showed up at a banquet facility near downtown Orlando…

At one point this week, Giuliani made an unscheduled visit to the Daytona International Speedway for a photo op of the former mayor speeding in circles in his campaign bus around the racetrack inside the empty stadium, perhaps an almost too-perfect metaphor for his effort here.

Well put.

So that’s the good news. The bad news is Morman Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain are getting stronger.