Today on the presidential campaign trail

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - IN THE HEADLINES: Obama and Huckabee, winners in Iowa, face new tests in New Hampshire ... Hoping to rebound, Clinton urges New Hampshire voters to vet and question candidates ... Obama goes for victory in New Hampshire, 'feels good' after big Iowa win ... Kucinich, Hunter, Gravel cut from ABC News presidential debates set for Saturday ... Edwards urges New Hampshire voters to overturn Iowa results ... Loss behind him, Romney seeks rebound ... Huckabee hopes tax plan will boost his prospects in the Granite State

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Iowa winners face new challenges

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Iowa caucus victories behind them, Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama vowed to stick with their winning principles Friday in an abbreviated dash to the finish in New Hampshire's presidential primary campaign, despite facing a different political alignment and, as Huckabee put it, "only a few days to close the sale."

Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain, GOP poll leaders in New Hampshire, stood ready to try to douse Huckabee's "prairie fire" in a state that lacks the religious voting bloc of Iowa and has an ornery tradition of rejecting Iowa's Republican caucus winners.

"It will be a different race here," Romney said Friday at a news conference in Portsmouth, N.H. He attributed Huckabee's Iowa win largely to his biography as a Southern Baptist preacher.

Obama, the Illinois senator who punctured Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's front-runner status in his convincing Iowa win, was rallying in Portsmouth and Concord. Clinton was being joined in Nashua by her husband, hoping to become the family's newest "Comeback Kid" in a state that revived Bill Clinton's run for the Democratic nomination in 1992.

New Hampshire's primary is Tuesday, only five days after Iowa, in an unprecedented compression of the campaign calendar.

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Clinton retools campaign for N.H.

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — Fighting back from a devastating loss in Iowa, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to recalibrate her campaign in New Hampshire Friday by promising to answer as many voter questions as possible.

With a new urgency to her voice, the former first lady dispensed with much of her lengthy campaign stump speech and took her case directly to New Hampshire voters, whose state primary is Tuesday.

New Hampshire could make or break Clinton's candidacy. A good showing in this snowbound state may be her only chance to stem the bleeding from Thursday night's Iowa caucuses, where voters resoundingly rejected her message of experience in favor of a charismatic newcomer, Barack Obama.

At a rally in a freezing cold airport hanger, the New York senator urged supporters to cut through all the "static in the air" to learn what they could about her candidacy and that of Obama and John Edwards, who also edged her in Iowa.

"I want to know from all of you ... what do you want to know about us?" she said. "Who will be the best president based not on a leap of faith but on the kind of changes we've already produced."

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Obama goes for NH win: 'This feels good'

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — Barack Obama said his win in Iowa lived up to his dreams. His kindergarten dreams.

Obama, whose win in Thursday's Iowa caucuses dashed Hillary Rodham Clinton's front-runner status, returned to New Hampshire on Friday, hoping to repeat the win in this state's primary on Tuesday.

"This feels good. This feels just like I imagined when I was talking to my kindergarten teacher," Obama said to laughter in a cold, echoing airplane hangar.

The kindergarten line is a favorite for the Obama campaign, referring to an exchange with the Clinton campaign over the longtime ambitions of their candidates.

A month ago, Obama took an apparent swipe at Clinton by saying he hadn't been planning to run for president for years like "some of the other candidates." The Clinton campaign responded by citing media reports quoting Obama and friends talking about him running for the White House for years — and mentioning essays he'd written even in the third grade and kindergarten.

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ABC cuts 3 from presidential debates

NEW YORK (AP) — ABC News is eliminating Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter and Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel from its prime-time presidential debates Saturday night because they did not meet benchmarks for their support.

The Republican debate three days before the New Hampshire primary will include Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. It starts at 7 p.m. EST.

Shortly after that 90-minute forum, Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson will take the stage at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.

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Edwards makes his case to NH voters

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards implored New Hampshire voters Friday to turn around the Iowa caucus results and vote for a candidate "who will fight for the middle class" against corporate interests that he accuses of moving jobs overseas and making health care expensive.

Edwards, who edged Hillary Rodham Clinton for second place behind winner Barack Obama in Iowa, said New Hampshire voters "now have two choices," implying Clinton is out of the running. Without naming his rivals, Edwards suggested he would wage a populist agenda more energetically than would Obama as he addressed about 300 campaign workers and supporters at a dawn rally in Manchester.

Edwards and his advisers portrayed Iowa's results as a call for political change in America after President Bush. Their goal is to focus the choice between Edwards and Obama, and then paint Obama as too tepid and conciliatory.

The key question, he said here, is "are we willing to fight the corporate greed that has an iron-fisted grip on our democracy?"

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Romney seeks rebound in New Hampshire

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney reached into the sports metaphor closet Friday as he sought to give perspective to an Iowa caucus loss that put added pressure on him to win next week's New Hampshire primary.

"This is still a nice, long process here," he told about 150 campaign workers who defied frigid temperatures and the 3 a.m. hour to greet his plane as it returned from the Midwest. "We've had, if you will, the first inning of a game that has, let's say, 50 innings in it."

He made several veiled jabs at Sen. John McCain, a congressional veteran who is challenging Romney's long-standing lead in New Hampshire.

"I want to go to Washington to bring the kind of can-do, change experience that I've had everywhere I've been," he said. "I changed a business. I helped change the Olympics. I helped change a state and I'm going to change Washington. We're going to take it apart, put it back together again, this time smarter, smaller and simpler."

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Huckabee pins New Hampshire hopes on tax plan

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Mike Huckabee said he hopes to follow his victory in Iowa's caucus with a win in New Hampshire by appealing to the state's famous fervor for low taxes.

The former Arkansas governor supports a "Fair Tax," a proposal to eliminate federal income taxes in favor of a 23 percent national sales tax.

"My tax plan, which would completely overhaul the tax system, is connecting with voters in New Hampshire," Huckabee said in an interview Friday on CBS' "Early Show." "We only have a few days to close the sale, but I think the momentum coming out of Iowa is going to be good for us, then we're on to South Carolina and Florida, where we're running first in the polls. We're going to have a great month."

Huckabee was boosted in Iowa by conservative evangelical voters, who are sparse in New Hampshire. He also lags behind rivals Mitt Romney and John McCain in polls of likely GOP primary voters in the Granite State.

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THE DEMOCRATS

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson campaign in New Hampshire.

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THE REPUBLICANS

Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul talk to voters in New Hampshire.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"We are Seabiscuit." — John Edwards, referring to the famous race horse that beat the odds.

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STAT OF THE DAY:

Seventy-two percent of New Hampshire citizens voted in the 2004 presidential election, according to the Census Bureau.

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Compiled by Ann Sanner.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080104/ap_on_el_pr/2008_race_rundown [link]