Changing fortunes of Republican presidential candidates

It pays to remember when betting on elections that opinion polls only indicate to us how people would vote at the time they are asked by the pollsters and that can be quite a different thing to what they actually do when they get around later to casting a real ballot.
Here is what the polls averaged by Real Clear Politics indicated back at the beginning of December in 2007 indicated about the likely Republican presidential candidates:

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Rudolph Giulani looked like a shoe-in and the eventual winner John McCain like an also-ran.
Back then I disregarded the polls as a glib New Yorker did not seem to me to fit the mood of conservative Republicans and McCsain turned out a nice winner for me.
This is what the RCP averages are showing at the start of this December:

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Mitt Romney has been chugging along near the top while first Perry, then Cain and now Gingrich have pushed their way past him.

That perhaps shows that Romney is not really an ideal choice for most Republicans but I am punting that the Gingrich star will fade in the same way as the other two.