Who I thought would win the GOP nomination:
When I started caring to early 2007 - McCain, out of process of elimination. I was rather adamant that Giuliani would never win, Romney didn't impress me and I was beyond confident some joke like Frist or other mentioned candidates would go nowhere.
mid-2007 - Once McCain collapsed I briefly thought it would be Romney, and then Fred Thompson when he became hyped up, but then flipped back to Romney once it became obvious how much of a joke Thompson was.
late 2007-2008 - Once Huckabee became serious and McCain began his comeback I was still betting on Romney. I thought he would take Iowa (wrong), and that he could comeback after losing NH (true to some extent.). After South Carolina I admitted McCain was more likely and after Florida I realized he had it in the bag.
That more or less tracks with my own thinking on the GOP primary race, with some minor differences here and there: I thought McCain had regained frontrunner status somewhat earlier than you did (probably around the time Huckabee won Iowa), and while I was pretty down on Giuliani's chances throughout the whole campaign and never really thought he was really the "frontrunner", there was definitely a period when I thought he might actually have a chance at pulling it off.....I think it was late summer / early fall, when he was still managing to hold onto a spot in the top two or three in the polls in every early primary state, including IA and SC.
However, I always figured that if Giuliani was going to win, his victory scenario would have to involve winning at least one of the first two or three primaries (there was a time when it didn't look so hopeless for him in NH and MI). I was rather adamant about the fact that there was no way that he could lose all of the first five, and then miraculously come back and win Florida and then Super Tuesday.
I remember starting a thread back in early December when I asked "If you knew for certain that Giuliani was going to lose IA, NH, MI, SC, *and* NV, how would you rate the probability of him winning Florida?" A huge number of people said they still thought he'd still have at least a 50/50 shot at Florida. There were all these people making arguments like "Why would the rest of the country care what Iowa and New Hampshire do?" It made me chuckle.
