Leaving aside the debate over whether Rudy Giuliani or John McCain can win the Republican nomination, these (very early) polling numbers from Quinnipiac confirm why the Democrats would much rather see Republicans go another direction with their nominee. Giuliani leads Hillary Clinton 48% - 41% and McCain leads by one point, 44%- 43%. While these polls are ludicrously early it is safe to say Giuliani would put New Jersey's 15 electoral votes in play, a loss Clinton would be hard pressed to easily offset.

Barring a sizable third party candidate Clinton is not going to carry a single southern state. So from the GOP's standpoint the ability to put blue states in play fundamentally alters the generic landscape of the general election. McCain would lock down the red states in the Southwest that are trending Democratic (Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada) which combine for 29 electoral votes. Giuliani would seriously put in play the 36 blue electoral votes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And both McCain and Giuliani would complicate Democratic efforts to hold on to the upper Midwest trio of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa that have been slowly trending toward the GOP.

Clinton and Giuliani have a significant home-court advantage in New Jersey, so their big leads in the respective Dem and GOP fields are easily discounted. But they are on equal footing when they go head-to-head and the numbers underscore the broad Democratic concerns that Hillary is simply too polarizing to win in the general. Quinnipiac's Clay Richards accentuates this point in his analysis:

Looking more deeply into the numbers, Sen. Clinton is losing Democratic voters to GOP rivals and she trails among the state's large bloc of independent voters. While it's very early, one has to wonder how Sen. Clinton will play in the rest of the country when she has these numbers right next door.

Clinton leads Romney by a whopping 24 points, 53 - 29 and while much of that is simply name ID, or Romney's lack of it, it underscores Clinton's vulnerabilities in the general against either McCain or Giuliani.

Ironically, Clinton's shot at the White House may depend less on Obama or Edwards and more on the Republican party rejecting its two front runners as too moderate or independent and opting for a "more conservative" candidate.

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