Will This Be The Year That Conventional Wisdom Doesn't Apply To The Presidential Race?

From BluegrassReport.org

When it comes to the presidential primary races, Conventional Wisdom holds:

1. Only three tickets "will be punched" for each party coming out of the January 3rd Iowa Caucus, meaning any candidate who fails to finish among the top three is toast;

2. The nominations will be wrapped-up by "Super Tuesday" on February 5th when states that hold 55% of each party's delegates will have had elections;

Rudy Giuliani's (R) decision to shift resources from Iowa and New Hampshire (where he's in third place in recent polls) to Florida (and other big states) is of questionable strategy.
This year, Convention Wisdom may prove to be wrong on all accounts. Here's why.

First -- money. Unlike previous years when candidates actually agreed to strict spending limits in exchange for partial federal funding of their campaigns, this cycle's candidates have raised never-before-seen sums of money. Usually, poor performances in Iowa and New Hampshire were guarantees that fundraising resources would dry-up quicker than a sponge in a desert, making it all but impossible to mount effective campaigns in subsequent states. But as of the last reporting date (October 31), the top five candidates (Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Giuliani and Romney) had raised a staggering total of $270 million, insuring that regardless of the outcomes in Iowa and New Hampshire, most will still have ample cash reserves in the bank to continue their campaigns.

Second -- allocation of delegates. While it is true that states holding 55% of the overall convention delegates will have held their primary or caucus by February 5th (and each party's presidential nominee must receive a majority of the delegates in order to win their nomination), there are two complicating factors at play which reduce the impact of Super Tuesday and the early states:

scroll down for entire piece:

http://www.bluegrassreport.org/