As I’ve been out of the loop for the past few days, I’ve missed the opportunity to comment on a few news items that lend support to my thesis that George Allen and Rudy Giuliani will be the last men standing in the contest for the GOP nomination in 2008.?

I articulated my recent epiphany?here, where I argued that an Allen/Rudy race is inevitable due to the fact that the Virginia senator and the former mayor are the only serious 2008 candidates registering net positive support among both GOP activists and casual Republican voters.

On the heels of that post came a poll of New Hampshire GOP insiders, discussed earlier?by Kavon, which shows Allen and Giuliani taking the top two spots again, this time among Granite State Republicans.? As Kavon rightly noted, this poll is meaningless with regard to the New Hampshire electorate, which will consist of both strong Republicans and weak GOPers, as well as scores of independents.? But taken for what it is — a poll of committed Republicans — it does serve as support for the argument that Giuliani and Allen are just a tad more popular than everyone else in the field among the rank and file.

And then we have this?tidbit, also posted by Kavon, informing us that the aspect of the nomination contest nearly as important as popular support — the money race — is being won by, you guessed it, Allen and Rudy.

And finally, the very politically savvy Pat Ruffini has garnered over 21 thousand votes on a presidential straw poll perpetually linked to his blog.? The results?are very anti-climactic given all of the aforementioned evidence.? It’s an Allen/Giuliani race.

Now, I will warn prognosticators to avoid getting too certain of anything in politics, given its long history of light-speed changes.? I still remember Pat Buchanan proclaiming that the ’04 Democratic contest was a Kerry/Gephardt race, and we all saw how that turned out.? But it is important to keep in mind that contests for the Republican nomination are almost always more stable and more dependent on hierarchy than battles for the Democratic nod.? The fact that Rudy is the actual frontrunner in the race based on the scientific polls and that Allen is sort of a shadow frontrunner based on the straw polls of party activists is pretty solid evidence that these two guys aren’t going away anytime soon.