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.