Rubio’s campaign now seems to be consciously following in Giuliani’s footsteps:

Under pressure to emerge as the Republican mainstream’s presidential contender, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is increasingly relying on a national strategy as he lowers expectations for February’s primary contests.

He’s betting big that Republican voters across the political spectrum will ultimately coalesce behind his candidacy in the state-by-state slog for delegates his team envisions for the months ahead.

Put another way, the Rubio campaign continues to struggle in all of the early states, and it has no alternative but to pretend that it has a chance to recover later on. This isn’t exactly the same as Giuliani’s “strategy” in 2008, which had written off the early states from the start, but it is quite similar. It is probably going to end up producing comparable results. Giuliani’s “long-haul” approach was an admission of the weakness of his candidacy, and so it seems to be with Rubio.

In fact, it is possible that Rubio might not do as well as Giuliani did in Florida. If Rubio were trying to hold on until Florida to benefit from a home-state advantage, he hasn’t taken into account the fact that most Floridian Republicans prefer someone else:

A new Florida Atlantic University poll in Florida finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential field with 48% support among likely Republican voters, followed Ted Cruz at 16%, Marco Rubio at 11% and Jeb Bush at 10%.

Those numbers are unlikely to improve if Rubio gets to mid-March without a single win. One factor that may help explain Rubio’s relative weakness in Florida is that most Republicans in the state didn’t want him to run for president, and wanted him to run for re-election to the Senate instead. He did exactly the opposite of what most Florida Republicans wanted him to do, and it appears they weren’t kidding. If Rubio can’t count on a good result from Florida, it would be better for him to drop out earlier to avoid losing so badly at home.