This won't hurt him at all in the Republican primaries.
and as far as the Republican front runners go... I actually kind of like Huckabee. He's way too religious, and perhaps too naive to be an effective chief executive, but at least he's not a total douchebag.
I like the McCain of 2000. McCain of '04 not as much. McCain of '08 very little... but I'm holding out hope (in case of an unlikely win by him) that his conservative ass-kissing lately is just completely for show because he realizes that it's the only way he can win the primary race, and then once he has that taken care of he'll come back to the center for the national race and the following four years, and get back to talking about necessary political reform. As much as I detest this type of disingenuous politics, I understand the necessity of it for candidates trying to run in the current ultra-partisan climate.
I appreciate Giuliani's moderate stance on social issues, don't like him for most other reasons. On foreign policy he scares me.
Mitt Romney seems like a reasonable and level-headed guy, even though there are plenty of things I disagree with him about, too.
Ron Paul is probably my favorite of the "front runners," though it's difficult to make the argument that he even deserves to be called a front runner. Also, if he were elected to office, I'd hope that the Democrats would win a large majority in both the House and the Senate to keep him somewhat in check so he can't disband air traffic control and the FDIC. I like that he actually embraces real Conservative values, not this neo-con/religious right bullshit.
If we could make a sort of Frankenstein's monster out of all the candidates that would be ideal.