The White House’s evolving story on the lost emails: We lost those emails … no, we didn’t … well, maybe we did–but can you prove it?

I know I’ve been hitting on the Rudy collapse story for a while. But it’s just so vast there are a lot of points to cover. Remember that the Rudy ‘plan’ (which on many levels is a phony one anyway) was to plan for a knockout blow in February by winning big states like California. And for a long time Rudy had a commanding lead there, double digits as of the end of last year.

Rasmussen has a poll out today that has Rudy in 5th place at 11%. Another poll, from a couple days earlier, had him in second place with 18%.

But the rankings aren’t as contradictory as they sound. The key is that over the last two months Rudy has coughed up a huge double digit lead and fallen back either into a clump of also-ran candidates or into near last place behind the also-ran candidates.

Late Update: For some more perspective, here’s a graph Pollster.com just posted showing Rudy’s falling poll numbers in the major primary states and nationally. The two blue lines up top are New York and New Jersey.

Rudy has a new ad out. And this time he’s gone so far as to use actual 9/11 footage.

As you can imagine, at this point Rudy’s campaign has descended to become a sort of desperate 9/11 primal scream.

But the words of this ad really take Rudy’s 9/11 megalomania to a new level. Against video of the towers falling, discussing Rudy’s role in the 9/11 drama, the announcer intones …

“And when the world wavered, and history hesitated, he never did.”

Does it even require snark and commentary? The world wavered and only Rudy brought us through? Even history hesitated?

There were a lot of humorous and/or ridiculous campaign moments this week, so we’ve started a new weekly Friday roundup of all the choicest clips of the week past. Squirrel eating, candidate constipation and how Rudy has become like the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail …

From TPM Reader JW …

Rudy’s collapse is the mark of the worst presidential campaign in history. Think about it: Rudy Gulliani was the national frontrunner a year ago in many, many polls. He led virtually all of his Republican opponents, and several of the top Democratic candidates as well. Today, he has been drubbed in every race and is left in a do-or-die situation in Florida.

Two of histories previous “worst” campaigns, Texans John Connally and Phil Gramm, were never considered the front-runners, never led in any polls and never had the continued, recent national exposure that Rudy has enjoyed. They spent far less money and accomplished really the same results.

Generations of political historians will pick at the Rudy 08 corpse and wonder what the hell happened. Losing is one thing, but this glorious flameout is one for the ages.

TPM Reader GC follows up on JW’s Rudy commentary …

Josh et al:

It’s fun to pile on Rudy (in the sense of hysterically laughing after narrowly avoiding a car crash), but, historically, it’s clear that Gary Hart in ’88 and Ted Kennedy in ’80 were both polling higher (Kennedy’s numbers, in particular, are stunning in retrospect) than Giuliani ever did.

Just trying to keep a small sense of perspective on a Friday.

I haven’t gone back and reviewed the numbers. But I think Rudy is at least in serious competition for worst presidential campaign ever, even in the face of these worthies. Hart, of course, was knocked out because of a sex scandal. So I would say that this is the campaign evaluation equivalent of a force majeure. It’s sort of beyond the scope of the campaign per se. With Kennedy, I think you’ve got to take into account the fact that he was running against an incumbent president, albeit a profoundly weakened one. And this has proved almost an impossibility in American history.

Now, we don’t have the Rudy campaign post-mortem yet. But if things go as they’re looking, I believe Rudy will have a robust claim to worst ever not so much on the basis of his top poll numbers but on the rate and magnitude of the fall. Kennedy, after all, did get plenty of delegates. Carter just beat him.

The thing with Rudy is that he was the dominant frontrunner for a year. He raised tons of money, actually shaped the whole race. Contrary to what he’s claimed he campaigned extensively in Iowa and extremely aggressively in New Hampshire. The strategy he now claims is simply an ex-post facto rationalization of the fact that he got his ass royally kicked in both states. Indeed, we’ve now had three major contests in the Republican race and Rudy has yet to bag a single delegate.

Now, despite the fact that I think Rudy’s campaign has basically flatlined, Eric Kleefeld and I just looked at the numbers out of Florida, and the extreme weakness of the rest of the field has at least made it possible that Rudy win Florida. McCain’s ahead there now and Rudy’s back in the pack in second or third. But McCain’s losing ground in South Carolina. So if Romney takes Nevada and Huck takes SC, perhaps Rudy could stride forward amidst the bodies and take first in Florida. Not likely, but not impossible.

So perhaps he’ll pull it out in Florida and then lose respectably on Super Tuesday. At the moment though, we’re well into the process and he’s gone from the dominant frontrunner, with tens of millions of dollars, to an also-ran, often running behind Ron Paul.

Remember, again, here’s the big picture on his numbers in the important states and nationwide …

As you know, there are Republican and Democratic caucuses in Nevada tomorrow and a pivotal Republican primary in South Carolina. And we’ll be bringing you breaking coverage all through the day tomorrow and into the evening.

We’ll have our returns scoreboard up as we have on previous primary nights. So if you’re a political junkie, we’ll have you covered.

We expect the first results to come from the Republican caucuses a little before 1 PM Eastern tomorrow, with the Democratic numbers to follow a couple hours later.

In South Carolina the polls close at 7 PM Eastern.

Join us.

From TPM Reader TN …

I think the Rudy! strategy at this point looks like this: Lose every state. Claim you never really contested any of them. Hope for a brokered convention. At the convention, claim you are the only candidate who never really lost a primary or a caucus. Hope people fall for it. Win the nomination.

It’s just crazy enough to work, isn’t it?

Work? No. Stupid enough to be Rudy’s next professed strategy? Yes.

Olbermann goofs–and apologies.

TPM Reader AMS driven to literary heights …

Something worth noting about the Giuliani campaign:

As we’ve seen Rudy hemorrhage support and lose increasingly embarrassing primary after primary, the 9/11 focused rhetoric of his campaign has sunk far below the line of self-parody into some kind of bizarro world—but most importantly, the degree of absurdity has increased with each subsequent loss.

We’ve still got Nevada and South Carolina to go before super Tuesday, both of which Rudy is absolutely sure to lose. That means that even if he somehow pulls out a victory in Florida, we are guaranteed at least another 10 days of increasingly hilarious self-deifying 9/11 exploitation. His ad today said that when “the world wavered” and “history hesitated, [Rudy] never did.” It’s hard to imagine how that rhetoric could be escalated any further, but finding solutions to those seemingly intractable problems is the hallmark of a man ready to be President.

The merging of self-immolation and self-aggrandizement here may be approaching the sublime.