My fellow CQ Politics blogger Craig Crawford has been following the story surrounding Rudy Giuliani’s questionable use of New York City security funds for personal travel.

Crawford says Giuliani has so far offered a “good enough excuse for the weird accounting practices,” but “the excuse is not good enough to repair the potential damage to his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.”

By this point, most Republican voters following the primary campaign are aware of Giuliani’s moderate to liberal record on social issues. That alone appears to be Giuliani’s greatest hurdle toward securing his party’s nomination. But Crawford says there is potential for far greater fallout because many of those same Republican primary voters don’t know the alleged and confirmed details of Giuliani’s personal life when he was mayor of New York City:

“There are still plenty of GOP voters outside New York who have not heard the sordid details about Giuliani’s personal life in those days (which, by the way, is the reason that his children barely speak to him). And stories like this, even if you accept his explanations for how the expenses were handled, only serve to introduce the dirty details to voters around the country.”

It plays into a common thread by Rudy's critics: the more you know about him, the less you find to like.

Still, it remains to be seen how much life this story will have in the traditional media. But the story is not likely to go away anytime soon in the blogosphere, where liberals are seizing the moment to highlight what they consider Giuliani’s greatest liability: himself.

Over at AMERICAblog, Joe Sudbay writes: "Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. The GOP front-runner is in BIG trouble. He's got a major scandal on his hands -- having taxpayers finance his affair probably won't go over so well with the GOP voters. Just imagine how insane the right wingers would be if a Democrat pulled a stunt like that and also tried to cover it up. So, let's get cranking."

NRO’s Jim Geraghty says the Republican candidates’ answers at last night presidential debate bordered on xenophobia:

"Based on the tone and answers given tonight, you would think that the Republican Party seethes with a blistering resentment of immigrants, with only the briefest of pauses to distinguish between those who are illegal and legal.”

Let’s be honest here, the “tone and answers” last night are not some sort of anomaly in the greater immigration debate amongst conservatives. These are the responses, sincere or not, that the Republican candidates think they must give in order to appeal to their base voters.

As Tom Tancredo noted during the debate, “[A]ll I've heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo. It is great. I am so happy to hear it. It is a wonderful thing. It's a good message, yes. We want to secure the borders.

Anyone who doubts this just needs to go back and look at the congressional debate over immigration reform. Even John McCain, the Republican architect of a proposed comprehensive bill, has taken to apologizing for his support of a guest-worker program.

Or, consider the semantic impact of terms like “illegal alien,” as opposed to “illegal immigrant,” or, "guest worker."

There is, of course, a fair debate to be had over immigration and border security. It’s certainly not immoral to oppose illegal immigration on law enforcement grounds. But it’s intellectually dishonest to deny that sizable portions of the debate are in fact anti-immigrant and/or anti-Hispanic. The greater moral and political dilemma these candidates must weigh is whether any short-term electoral gains are worth sacrificing the long-term support of an increasingly empowered, and vocal, minority population. Because that, right or wrong, is exactly what’s happening.

Several conservative bloggers responded with at least mild praise last night to CNN's handling of the YouTube Republican presidential debate. That's no small feat for the news network many on the right feel caters to a center-left audience.

However, CNN probably shouldn't be sending out wedding announcements just yet. As news trickled out that at least three of last night's questions were asked by "plants," volunteers or individuals directly affiliated with Democratic presidential campaigns, the love was quickly lost.

Count this as a rare occurrence in which the views of liberal and conservative bloggers match up not only with each other, but with the traditional media. All together now: Mike Huckabee won last night’s debate.

That’s good news for the former Arkansas governor, who now leads in Iowa, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey.

Townhall’s Mary Katherine Ham writes, "I'm giving it to Huckabee. He's always good in debates, always well-spoken. He parried attacks on his fiscal record well, deflecting with a lot of talk about the Fair Tax. He also got the chance to point out that he had signed the no-tax pledge, which is better than several others have done. He's riding a high, he came across as sensitive and smart, and was able to obscure his non-conservative record."

Nearly 10,000 Daily Kos readers chimed in on last night’s debate. Huckabee came in second with 34 percent. Ron Paul was the only other candidate who received more than 10 percent of the vote. Technically, Paul won the poll with 48 percent. However, because his campaign is primarily an online and fundraising phenomenon, those results should be measured with some skepticism.

Last night’s CNN/YouTube Republican presidential forum was more than just another debate. It’s also illustrative of the sometimes-painful technological learning curve many of the candidates are going through.

After July’s Democratic CNN/YouTube debate included questions from a talking snowman and a man holding a semiautomatic firearm, the majority of the Republican field balked at participating in a similar format, with Mitt Romney going so far as to say, “the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.”

Romney’s apparent aversion to pixelated questions raised a few eyebrows, including those at You Tube. “The very first Romney [YouTube] videos were pushback against allegations of flip-flopping,” said YouTube’s Steve Grove, noting that Romney’s campaign had posted more videos to the site than any other candidate (He currently has more than 400 videos posted, using what You Tube calls a “flood the zone" strategy).

In fact, critics are enjoying an “I told you so” moment this morning, after CNN’s Anderson Cooper disclosed last night that one of the debate’s more interesting exchanges, about the role of gays in the military, was asked by a volunteer to Hillary’s Clinton’s campaign who did not disclose his affiliation.

Nonetheless, blaming Hillary Clinton doesn’t negate the fact that several of last night’s questions threw the candidates off-guard: Rudy Giuliani jumbled a question about gun rights, Mitt Romney stumbled on the torture question and several candidates, including Mike Huckabee, struggled with pointed questions on immigration.

The real question facing Republicans today is not whether they should make use of emerging technology, but how the medium can be used to improve their communication skills.There’s a tendency in the media to overemphasize the real-world impact of online activism, but the danger to those who ignore the grassroots power of the internet is very real.