I wish this surprised me:

...A new poll finds that three out of four Republicans, or 74%, think Rudy Giuliani is "acceptable" as the GOP nominee, suggesting that the fact that he's out of step with many of them on abortion, gay rights and other issues doesn't necessarily disqualify him as GOP standard-bearer in their eyes.

The new Gallup poll, interestingly, puts Rudy comfortably ahead of the rest of the GOP field on this question. Fifty-nine percent of respondents say Fred Thompson's an acceptable nominee, 57% say John McCain is acceptable, and 53% say the same about Mitt Romney....

Talk about Teflon -- first we learn that hardly anyone in America would describe Giuliani (accurately) as "mean" or "rude," and now we see he's getting this vote of confidence from his own party, despite the fact that there's rising awareness of his positions on social issues among GOP voters.

Lately I've been wondering whether Rudy's star might be falling while Romney surges in Iowa and New Hampshire and Thompson' comes on strong. But this reminds me that we absolutely mustn't count Giuliani out. And he's absolutely the strongest candidate the GOP has for '08.

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(Link via Huge Seagull in comments.)


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UPDATE: A new Fox News poll shows Hillary Clinton beating Giuliani by 5 points and Barack Obama beating him by 4 points. Er, Clinton and Obama are Democrats. Rudy is a Republican. So why isn't Rudy losing in a blowout yet? (It's not as if Fox is pumping the GOP up -- Bush's approval is at 31%, barely higher than in other polls.) Clinton and Obama do perform better against McCain, Romney, and Thompson, however, though the only blowouts are Clinton-Romney (Clinton +15) and Obama-Thompson (Obama +16).

Oh, and I should have noted that the Fox News poll certainly doesn't show Rudy's star falling -- he has a double-digit lead over everyone else in the race.