Rudy's Plan to Win the White House Revealed

Somebody in the Giuliani campaign got careless and left a copy of Rudy's plan to win the White House laying around, which promptly ended up in the hands of a rival and the hands of the press:

It's clearly laid out in 140 pages of printed text, handwriting and spreadsheets: The top-secret plan for Rudy Giuliani's bid for the White House.

The remarkably detailed dossier sets out the budgets, schedules and fund-raising plans that will underpin the former New York mayor's presidential campaign - as well as his aides' worries that personal and political baggage could scuttle his run.

At the center of his efforts: a massive fund-raising push to bring in at least $100 million this year, with a scramble for at least $25 million in the next three months alone.

The loss of the battle plan is a remarkable breach in the high-stakes game of presidential politics and a potentially disastrous blunder for Giuliani in the early stages of his campaign.

The document was obtained by the Daily News from a source sympathetic to one of Giuliani's rivals for the White House. The source said it was left behind in one of the cities Giuliani visited as he campaigned for dozens of Republican candidates in the weeks leading up to the November 2006 elections.

Giuliani spokeswoman Sunny Mindel suggested there were political dirty tricks behind the loss of the documents and called the timing suspicious.

"I wonder why such suspicious activity is occurring and can only guess it is because of Rudy's poll numbers in New Hampshire and Iowa," Mindel said.

I don't know how big a loss this will really be since no battle plan, either political or military, survives the first shots and there will undoubtedly be major changes along the way. It does, however, give his rivals some ideas of how he will approach the coming campaign and that could be helpful to rivals who want to derail his efforts.