Can Rudy Fail

I wonder about things like Wayne Barrett's devastating takedown of Rudy Giuliani in The Village Voice. Mark Kleiman, for example, notes that it appears one factor in Giuliani's otherwise baffling decision to put the NYC command post in the World Trade Center was that he wanted to use it as a love shack in which to conduct his affair with Judy Nathan.

Kevin Drum ponders whether this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back even though "the Christian right has at least semi-forgiven Giuliani for his stands on abortion and gay rights. And the philandering and the messy divorce don't seem to have hurt him all that much either." The attack seems like it could, in principle, be very damaging. But coming from liberals it almost seems to me to help Rudy, whose campaign seems to be premised in part on the idea that if Village Voice writers hate him so much, he must be doing something right. I feel like these kind of stories would need to appear in National Review to draw blood. Otherwise, it's the equivalent of how Hillary Clinton's conservative detractors are her primary campaign's best friend.