THE NOTE: Will Rudy Sink the GOP?

Oct. 1, 2007 — -- Between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, and Brett Favre breaking touchdown records while the Mets collapse and O.J. Simpson faces prison time (all while Hillary Clinton talks healthcare) -- are we the only ones having the sudden urge to break out the old brick of a car phone and hit a Hootie concert?

Back to the present, fund-raising numbers will begin to roll out today (and what does the fact that they weren't leaked yesterday say about the state of the Clinton-Obama grudge match?). This is shaping up as a big week for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who has got to be more worried about the polling numbers than the financial ones (notwithstanding some good news out of Iowa).

First, though, time to catch up with the restless Republicans. Gingrich's choice of policy workshops instead of a presidential run means there's no big mystery left about who's in and who's out for the GOP (and Newt's decision is itself something of a statement on how any Republican can expect to fare against any Democrat in 2008).

The GOP ballot is still filled with question marks -- and the one next to former mayor Rudolph Giuliani's name is growing bigger by the day. This is Rudy's nightmare (and should be just as scary for everyone in a party that's in growing danger of coming apart at its seams): "A powerful group of conservative Christian leaders decided Saturday at a private meeting in Salt Lake City to consider supporting a third-party candidate for president if a pro-choice nominee like Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination," Salon.com's Michael Scherer reports.

"Giuliani is beyond the pale," Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative activist and author, told ABC's Jake Tapper after the meeting. "Maybe it's just time to never support another Republican establishment candidate, and support principled conservative candidates -- win or lose." This is about Giuliani, but it's also a measure of how former senator Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., has failed to unite/excite/appease conservatives. "In his short time on the campaign trail, Thompson has demonstrated a moderate temperament and an independent streak belying hype that he would be the answer to [James] Dobson's prayers," Tapper writes.

Gingrich, R-Ga., opted to say out of this mess by choosing his "American Solutions" project over a presidential run. He's blaming it on a campaign-finance law (and -- sort of -- on a certain Republican presidential candidate) saying on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that it's McCain-Feingold's fault, since the statute "criminalizes politics" (you didn't think Newt would go quietly, did you?).

His decision to preserve his workshops is honorable and everything -- but does anyone think he'd choose to be a "citizen activist" if he thought he had a real chance of winning the presidency? Perhaps all that presidential talk was what many thought it was all along: a means of selling Gingrich himself. Or, if he's right and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is on a glide path toward becoming the next president, maybe it's that Gingrich would rather be Richard Nixon ('68) than Barry Goldwater ('64).

Gingrich had this to say about the GOP's chances: "The Republicans have got to get out from under Washington. . . . Trying to beat Senator Clinton personally is just insane."

Gingrich's co-pundit on "This Week" yesterday agreed that Clinton will be the Democratic nominee (surprise!). Former President Clinton's turn on the Sunday shows again displayed him as the great asset that he is for his wife's campaign -- and the potential he has to put her campaign off-message.

On ABC's "This Week," he defended NAFTA (attention, John Edwards). Yet, as ABC's Tahman Bradley reports, he also came into line with his wife's position on torture (attention, Rudy Giuliani). (And can't the Jack Bauer Exception be codified in federal law already?)

As for whether his wife is too polarizing to be president, Clinton said, "She's been beat up on for 16 years. I ask [skeptics], 'Do they really want to reward the Republican attack machine?' "

No Democrat will answer yes -- but to get at the real question that's key to Hillary Clinton's candidacy, sub in the word "provoke" for "reward." Obama has taken to quoting the former president on the campaign trail. "[Bill Clinton] said, 'The same old experience is not relevant. You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience,' " Obama said over the weekend in New Hampshire, per ABC's Sunlen Miller. "I think he was absolutely right."

This is crunch time for Obama. With a new Iowa showing him ahead in the Hawkeye State, tomorrow he will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the anti-war speech he gave shortly before the Senate -- including Clinton and Edwards -- voted to authorize force to oust Saddam Hussein.

His coming campaign swing through Iowa "signals the intensification of Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and a commitment to spend more time in key early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire and fewer days in the Senate," Dan Balz and Perry Bacon Jr. write in yesterday's Washington Post.

Expect "increased engagement" with Clinton, Balz and Bacon write, but don't expect all-out war. "I know there's a tremendous blood lust out there in the political community who want us to be in a steel-cage match with her," says Obama strategist David Axelrod (continuing to make it more difficult for his candidate to change course later). "But he's going to resist the thirst for gratuitous combat, because that's part of his critique of the political process."

There's a growing sense of urgency surrounding the Obama campaign; being 20 points down isn't fun for the candidate or his donors, staff, and volunteers. "His powerful and growing grass-roots network --