As I reported earlier, MySpace has joined the campaign.  However, the site that TechPresident.com said was Rudy's, does not appear to be Rudy's.  MySpace recently launched MySpace Impact with pages for each candidate, including this one for Giuliani. According to this article from InfoWorld:

As of Monday afternoon, "friends" were already on board various candidate sites. For instance, Romney, McCain and Clinton each had more than 1,000 MySpace friends, while Obama had more than 68,000. Paul, also running for president, had about 350 friends. Giuliani's profile was set to "private" and so it could not be publicly seen.

Additionally, Giuliani now has a YouTube feed.  YouTube launched YouChoose08 two weeks ago and reviews are already coming in.  According to this Washington Post article on Saturday, "Rudolph W. Giuliani treats YouTube as if it were C-SPAN -- a place for his 58-minute speech to the Churchill Club."

According to YouTube's YouChoose08 page as of 1500 EDT 03-20-07, Giuliani's 5 videos have  the third highest number of views (43,471), behind Hillary Clinton's 15 videos (51,756) and way behind Barak Obama whose 21 videos blow away the competition with a whopping 640,996 views.  It's interesting to note, however, that Hillary has been on YouTube for 8 months, Obama for 6 months, but Rudy has only been on the site for 4 weeks to get that many views.

In the past week or so, JoinRudy2008.com has run some news briefs about some new members of his team, the endorsement of the Police Officers Association of Michigan, and a piece today on various quotes about America's Mayor from average voters.

WHAT HIS OPPONENTS ARE SAYING:

Once again, basically nothing.  Rudy does have some serious critics in the social conservatives.  The For President "impartial" blog reports that:

Now, at the grassroots, there is an emerging "Stop Rudy" movement. This is primarily social conservatives. Last week, we saw both Catholic and Southern Baptist leaders come out against a Rudy candidacy in a strong way. Now, we have a "Giuliani Life Long Liberal" packet floating around, with a differently named website, created by former Giuliani Conservative Party opponent George Marlin. There is also a conservative "Declaration of Independence" of conservatives who pledge not to support Giuliani under any circumstances.

NEWS FROM THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA:

CNN reported on March 6 that Giuliani's son Andrew, a 21-year-old sophomore at Duke, will not be participating in Rudy's campaign.  He cited the bad blood between his mother and his father since their divorce and says that his focus on his plan to become a pro golfer would not leave him any time to join the campaign "even if he wanted to."  Further, CNN says:

Asked about his family issues during a campaign appearance in California, Rudy Giuliani acknowledged "these problems with blended families are challenges. And the challenges are best worked on privately," he said. "The more privacy I can have for my family, the better we're going to be able to deal with all these difficulties."

The next day, CNN ran a story that described the concerns of Richard Land, who is in charge of public policy for the Southern Baptist Convention, over Rudy's lack of character during his divorce from his second wife:

"I mean, this is divorce on steroids," Land said. "To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children. That's rough. I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control."

This is more of the same from the social conservatives, specifically Southern Baptists, and I don't really see why it should be headline news on CNN International.  People say these things every day on every news outlet in the country, but it doesn't seem to be showing up in the polls.

The New York Post's headline on March 3 read "Rudy Dragged Down" and the story ran under a picture of Rudy dressed as Marilyn Monroe on SNL in 1997.  The article discussed how attendees at the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference in DC that weekend were "whispering" about Rudy's performances in a dress:

"It wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact that his views on every conservative value weren't so far to the left. But it resonates here," said Georgia conservative Justin Lewis Wight.

The article also reports that newspaper clippings were passed around accusing Giuliani of "appointing left-leaning judges."  The LA Times followed up on this accusation last Monday with this article that cites the spokesperson for the Family Research Council and can only find four out of 127 judges that were outspoken in their liberalism.  Without some more concrete evidence at least some better/impartial sources, I am going to chalk this up to spin-doctoring.

On the other hand, a good criticism of Rudy's campaign and more specifically his speech to CPAC was written in the Washington Post by Dan Balz:

"Many GOP strategists still question whether Giuliani can survive the scrutiny and develop a message that appeals to voters across the spectrum of Republican conservatism. Based on his speech Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, there are good reasons for doubt. Giuliani highlighted his record as a tax cutter, crime fighter and welfare reformer. But he offered little resembling a traditional conservative agenda for the future, other than saying the United States must remain on offense against terrorism. The speech won a polite but hardly enthusiastic response from the audience of activists."

The Wall Street Journal reports on McCain's vulnerabilities shown in the March 2-5 WSJ/NBC News poll.  The article shows that "[i]n a two-way matchup of the best-known Republican contenders, Mr. Giuliani leads 55% to 34%; when also-ran candidates are included, Mr. Giuliani's lead is 38%-24%, more than double his margin from a December 2006 Journal/NBC poll."  Also:

Around the time of his formal announcement next month, Mr. McCain is expected to offer a renewed emphasis on spending restraint and other domestic issues that could help reduce the unremitting focus on the unpopular Iraq war.

To be sure, the poll shows Mr. Giuliani is vulnerable when that happens. Fully three of four Republicans -- including a majority of those backing the former New York City mayor -- say they would have reservations if they learned Mr. Giuliani supports abortion rights and supports civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. One in five Republicans expresses discomfort with the fact Mr. Giuliani has been married three times.

An article in the New York Times reported on the change in many states' primary dates in 2008 had this to say about Giuliani's campaign strategy:

Mr. Giuliani's aides suggested they might not spend as much time and money in Iowa and New Hampshire as other candidates, given his potential strength on Feb. 5 in places like California and New Jersey, two states with a more moderate electorate than Iowa and South Carolina.

"We have the ability to play the game a little differently," said Mike DuHaime, who is running Mr. Giuliani's campaign. "It's not a matter of saying the early states aren't important, because they are. It is just a matter of realizing that, unlike past primaries, there are many more states this year that will help decide the nominee."

The International Herald Tribune reported on March 6 (*the International Herald Tribune is owned by the New York Times, who also ran this story, but this version is free) that Giuliani is selling his Investment Firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors, to an Australian financial services business in order to focus on his campaign.

The London Times reported last Thursday that:

New York firefighters say that they have never forgiven him for cutting short search-and-recovery efforts for victims' remains at the World Trade Centre. They say that instead of carefully removing debris in order to recover more remains Mr Giuliani promoted a "scoop and dump" effort to speed the cleanup at Ground Zero.

Mr Giuliani's campaign says that the animosity of New York firefighters towards him stems from tough pay and conditions negotiations when he was mayor. It has distributed testimonials from other firefighters saying that they have the utmost respect for him.

The hero of 9/11 fighting with the other heroes of 9/11 does not bode well for Rudy's image.  Not at all.  That picture of the firefighters raising the flag at ground zero is the most famous image of the heroism on that day -- and nowhere in it do you see Rudy.  I expect this image to be used on at least one anti-Rudy TV ad before November 2008.

WHATS UP IN THE BLOGOSPHERE:

Conservative

RedState blog posts the results of a March 2-5 American Research Group poll that looks like Giuliani is only leading McCain 34-30.  Quote:

The margin of error is + or - 4%. If we take it at face value, then Rudy may face an uphill climb, particularly once McCain and others start slamming him on pro-life. His speech to NARAL in 2001 is a campaign ad waiting to happen.

The conservative Ankle Biting Pundits blogger Bull Dog Pundit wrote this biased but somewhat balanced (in that he presents both sides of the argument in an articulate way) on the Bernie Kerik indictment:

I'm of two minds on this. First, a disclaimer, I'm a tentative Rudy supporter.

My initial thought is that Rudy is in no way implicated in any wrongdoing himself. Anything that was done improperly was done by Kerik on his own, and was unknown to Giuliani, an these allegations didn't come to light until years after Rudy and Kerik were out of office.  Much as you don't punish the son for the sins of the father, why would you punish Rudy for something an appointee did without his knowledge and that wasn't known at the time he was appointed?

However, the other part of me says that Kerik could be a big liability to Rudy politically. As Mayor, Giuliani was in essence, "The Captain of the Ship", and like it or not, is going to be viewed as responsible for the actions of his appointee - even though none of the alleged acts were known during his tenure.

Kevin MucCullogh of Townhall, a conservative blog, wrote the headline "Giuliani: Must Publicly Fund Black Infanticide."  He goes on to provide the video of a 1989 speech where Giuliani says that there must be public funding for abortions for poor women. And MucCullogh says that Rudy "MUST RENOUNCE this position - clearly, firmly and with due haste."  He's probably right.  Another Townhall post by Mary Katherine Ham goes further in talking about whether Rudy is "nominatable" after this video.

Another Townhall blogger, Rich Tucker, takes a look back at NYC pre-Rudy and now, in order to demonstrate that Rudy is capable of fixing something that is broken.

Conservative blog Shots Across the Bow explains why Giuliani gets a pass on social issues with most conservatives:

Conservatism has never been dominated by the religious right the way liberals have always pictures them to be. Fiscally conservative socially liberal conservatives are a dime a dozen. It just doesn't make for good campaign fodder for either side to recognize their existence. Hey, my ideal candidate is one who is strong on defense, a champion of the balanced budget, and believes that the best government is the smallest government. Show me a candidate like that, and he's got my vote no matter what letter comes after his name.  Or her name for that matter.

Liberal

Liberal blog The Good Democrat does a nice job of demonstrating that the GOP field is full of "Moderate Candidates Who Live Like Liberals," based mainly on their divorces.  "In fact, if you think about it, the entire field of Dems deemed credible boasts fewer divorces than Rudy Giuliani alone!"

Radical Left posted on the eve of the CPAC that it is "the winter of [the GOP's] discontent"  which is a pretty turn of phrase but is backed up with very little fact.  The post goes through a bit of the history with the CPAC and talks about Reagan, but the conclusions are a bit of a stretch:

An era of a certain type of Republicanism - of heartless "big government conservatism" at home and discredited neoconservatism abroad - is coming to an end. This presidential election, like the midterms last November, is surely the Democrats' to lose.

Only a moderate, centrist Republican can win in 2008, but that is not where the party's centre of gravity lies.

Sometimes a political party needs a spell in opposition to recharge its batteries and sort itself out. That is now true of the Republicans in the US.

This assumes that the CPAC speaks for the entire base of the GOP which, according to polling data from the GOP as a whole vs. the CPAC conference, is clearly not the case.  Nice try, though.

The Hotline also posted the 1989 pro-abortion-for-poor-women video, and Americablog's John Aravosis links to it saying "Of course that was 1989. I'm sure Rudy Giuliromney will have a 'different' view today. He's already for "conservative judges" who will overturn pretty much everything he believes in, so I can't wait for him to backtrack from his previous statements about the public funding of abortion"  The Liberal Avenger also posted the video with the headline "Why does Giuliani hate fetuses?"  

Sidebar:I think the main reason that people go into blogging is so that they can publish as headlines the little quips they come up with and chuckle to themselves about.  I often chuckle at the one-liners bloggers on both sides of the aisle post about pretty serious issues.  Maybe that's the point though...

Anyway, the Liberal Avenger also posted last Thursday that Guiliani is getting away with not commenting on the US Attorney Purge story because:

Rudy can't answer because no matter what you think of any of his left-leaning policy positions, Rudy Giuliani is a gutless Republican loyalist. He's stood by and watched as the Republicans became more and more corrupt and he's never said anything. Why? Because Rudy's identity as a Republican partisan will always trump his principles. He's become such a shill for the Bush Administration that he is incapable of principled dissent or action against Bush's failed policies. He is seeking the Presidency not as a man of ideas or action but as the next member of the Bush family dynasty. Rudy Giuliani is Bush III.

And then the Daily Kos asks us, "Would Rudy pardon his "Scooter?" in reference to the Bernie Kerik scandal.  He has this to say:

...even at a time when we're finding out that the Bush gang is firing U.S. Attorneys who don't go lightly on Republicans caught with their hands in the cookie jar, the feds still want prison time for Kerik.

So, in light of the debate swirling around that other now-convicted Republican toady still clinging desperately to his civil rights and clogging up the court system with frivolous appeals, the operative question for Rudy is this: If elected, would you pardon Kerik?

Or is there actually such a thing as a Republican operative who's too dirty to touch?

Moderate

Pajamas Media does a great job of reporting on Rudy's campaigning in California, and a pretty thorough dissection of what is quickly becoming his stump speech.