So long, Rudy

Is there any Republican politician out there who just has normal, run of the mill sexual relationships? Any one at all?

No gay airport bathroom propositions, no asking underaged congressional pages to email you their penis size, no secret visits to prostitutes in multiple states? No divorcing your cancer-stricken, hospitalized wife in order to better carry on an affair with someone else? No weird sex trysts overlooking the smoldering ruins of New York's ground zero, or billing your secret mayoral booty calls to the budgets of city agencies tasked with helping poor people? No meth-addicted gay sex while preaching about the horrors of gay sex? No calling your coworkers at night while masturbating, telling them how much you'd like to falafel them up in the shower? No shoving pictures of fetuses in people's faces, or taking their own daughters into "chastity vows", or pontificating about the dangers of man-on-dog relationships?

Seriously, is this why Republicans are always so obsessed with governing everybody else's sex life -- because it's simply inconceivable to them that any two people would have a healthy, non-messed-up relationship?

Last night's YouTube debate questions were prepared well in advance of the breaking scandal yet it slipped in anyway; Giuliani denied all. That's not going to go over well with a GOP base having nearly nothing in common with a thrice-divorced cross-dressing librul.

And so, with the mayor's blood in the water, they each went at each other hammer and tong in St.Petersburg last night. First Mitt and Rudy over immigration, then later McCain and Ron Paul over Iraq, and later on McCain and Romney over waterboarding, and several skirmishes in between that appeared to this observer to give Mike Huckabee a star turn. He did the best job of avoiding questions with laugh lines that I've seen. And I thought Fred Thompson and McCain did well enough in comparison to the other loons to warrant a second look by the indecisive GOP voter.

Romney and Huckabee stand to benefit the most from the fast-approaching conclusion of the Giuliani campaign. Maybe McCain, although he still has a deep hole to climb out of. Perhaps it opens the door a bit wider for Dr. No.

But those madcap libertarians are pretty unpredictable, so who really knows?

Julie Mason had the live-blog. As one commenter there noted: "Mars and the Stars and Bars. And not one question on health care."

Update: Who's Playin' (Norman Fell! Precisely!) and Texas Moratorium Network (Preach it, Huck!) have quick opinions and video snippets.