McCain: 'Having Fun' in the Home Stretch

Dec. 18, 2007 — -- Right now, the Republican presidential race is all over the map.

There's Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister who has shot up in the polls and who took the amazing step Monday of injecting Jesus Christ directly into a political advertisement.

To the strains of "Silent Night" and with a cross shape carefully framed over his shoulder, Huckabee makes a profession of faith in a Christmas greeting to Iowa voters.

Then there's the actor Fred Thompson, once greeted as a conservative savior, now fading fast and a little upset about it. There's the national front-runner Rudy Giuliani, who could well lose Iowa and New Hampshire both badly. And then there's Mitt Romney, once the solid front-runner in Iowa, now relentlessly attacking Huckabee, who's zoomed past him.

And as if all that upheaval, bad blood and unpredictability weren't enough, Monday in Hillsborough, N.H., there was yet another surprise — John McCain's endorsement by Joe Lieberman.

The same Lieberman, who just seven years ago was the Democratic candidate for vice president as Al Gore's running mate, jumped into the Republican contest to endorse McCain.

"Being a Republican is important. Being a Democrat is important," Lieberman told reporters Monday. "But you know what is more important than that? The interest and well-being of the United States of America. Let's put America first again and John McCain is the man as president who will help us do that."

So with Republicans so deeply divided, McCain reached out to an independent Democrat for help.

Of course, as Lieberman — who has enraged Democrats with his staunch support of the Bush war policy — frankly admitted: "Let me just say something for the record — none of the Democratic candidates asked for my support. John McCain did."

It's that kind of race for Republicans. And so this was a very good day to check it out from McCain's perspective.

"Nightline" caught up with McCain just after 7 a.m. Monday in Concord, N.H., and boarded his bus, which, like always, is a rolling, nonstop news conference.