Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the like Republican nominee, had tough words for Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., saying their anti-NAFTA stance may have a ripple effect in support for global anti-terror efforts.
Ari Fleischer (he of the new ad-war gig) offered his take on the Thompson candidacy over the weekend, telling ABC's Christine Byun in Indianapolis that Thompson will find out quickly whether he made a major mistake in waiting so long to announce. "I think from the moment Fred Thompson declares -- he's got a one week window -- for people to say he's for real or not," Fleischer said. "If he's for real, the sky's the limit. If people get a let-down feeling after his announcement, because he got in so late, it will be harder for him."
The Washington Post profiles its latest campaign "guru": Pete Rouse, Obama's chief of staff, who was part of a contingent of aides who joined Obama from the office of former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. "Pete Rouse is the Outsider's Insider, a fixer steeped in the ways of a Washington that Obama has been both eager to learn and quick to publicly condemn," writes the Post's Perry Bacon Jr. And Bacon identifies one area where he kept Obama from would could have been a fatal political mistake: He talked him out of voting for John Roberts' Supreme Court nomination.
The Economist finds Rove's successor -- and he's working for Hillary Clinton: Mark Penn. "There are striking similarities between the new Rove (53) and the old (56). They are both masters of demographic trends and poll data. They are both fixated on the possibility of realigning chunks of the electorate -- Latinos in Mr. Rove's case, suburban mothers in Mr. Penn's. They both like peering into the future."
The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut examines Edwards' rural appeal. "Edwards is casting himself as the candidate of rural voters, someone who understands the plight and values of family farmers (especially powerful in Iowa) and who could do in a general election what he argues Clinton and Obama could not: attract culturally conservative voters," Kornblut writes. It's key to his electability argument: "I think John Kerry accelerated in Iowa and New Hampshire, partly, in January because people were looking for a winner," Edwards tells Kornblut. "I think it will be similar" in 2008.
Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, R-N.Y., talked taxes Saturday in New Hampshire -- and set up Democrats as unrepentant tax-raisers while pitching himself "as the tax-cutting heir to President Bush," ABC's Jake Tapper reports. "'We must take things away from you for the common good,'" Giuliani paraphrased Clinton as saying. "Do you understand what that implies? No, it's not Karl Marx. What she's saying in that is that 'We know better, the government knows better.'"
"Don't count him out quite yet," Bloomberg's Catherine Dodge writes of President Bush, who "is making use of his last remaining political tool -- the president's executive authority -- in an effort to rescue remnants of his tattered agenda." Dodge writes: "In recent weeks, the president announced an initiative to round up illegal workers and punish the businesses that hire them, and issued rules limiting a government health-insurance program for children that lawmakers want to expand. Through veto threats and executive directives, Bush is also attempting to recover Republicans' reputation for fiscal responsibility."
Why isn't former governor Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., catching on: "The short, cruel answer is that many people who should be his most enthusiastic supporters don't think he could win if he were pitted in a nasty race against the one Democrat conservatives loathe most," Newsweek's Holly Bailey writes. "In short, Huckabee is too nice to be president." Huckabee tells Bailey: "I am not a Republican clone. . . . I'm not right out of the laboratory of the RNC."
Maybe he started trying to make up for that yesterday. Huckabee is stepping up his fight with the Club for Growth, which is running ads attacking his record on taxes. Offering up a conspiracy theory that builds himself up, "You have to wonder who gave them that money," Huckabee said, per ABC's Tahman Bradley. "I have to think it's one of the other candidates." He also had this to say about Thompson: "People are expecting him to basically come in and be the fifth head on Mount Rushmore. Whether he can live up to that -- I think there's a real challenge for anybody to live up to that, including if Ronald Reagan were to come back."
Washington Post columnist David Broder likes how Bloomberg-Hagel (or Hagel-Bloomberg) sounds. "Hagel said that he and Bloomberg have 'had some talks' but that neither of them is ready at this moment to form a partnership or stake out a strategy," Broder writes. "It really comes down to a question of the strength of those tidal forces moving out there in American politics. . . . John Kennedy liked to say that a rising tide lifts all boats. The Bloomberg-Hagel pairing would test that proposition."
