So is Rudy Giuliani at the top of his game or is he faltering? Yesterday, Jonathan Martin called Giuliani "Mr. September" for having a particularly stellar month. Today, of course, we hear that religious conservatives are lining up against Giuliani and that he's faltering on the trail in general.

As Martin notes, Giuliani benefits the longer he goes without his social liberalism dominating the debate. So far, he has deftly managed to keep the media's and his opponents' attention elsewhere, such as picking a fight with MoveOn.org, keeping the heat on Hillary, and hanging out with Winston Churchill's granddaughter. Helping him out of course are his polling numbers.

But that's not to say those other stories -- both NYT articles -- are wrong in their angles. The view that the bottom could fall out of Giuliani's campaign at any moment was given an extra boost by the impending rebellion of the religious conservative group should he win the nomination. But the media has been waiting for that moment for some time now and, while the GOP race has narrowed some, Giuliani still commands an imposing lead.

You could draw the parallel between Giuliani's troubles with social conservatives and Hillary Clinton's problems with the far left, like MoveOn.org, Daily Kos, etc. -- groups which were supposed to make Hillary's nomination anything but inevitable. But we're still waiting on that to happen as well. Instead, what we saw on the nation's top liberal opinion pages over the weekend is that it's Hillary's caution, notably at the recent debate, that is starting to cause grumbles on the left. Benefiting both of course is that each one is their party's best chance of winning the election.

To answer the question, I agree with Martin and think Rudy had a good month. Beating expectations brings its own rewards, and Rudy is certainly beating expectations.