News and Notes: Presidential Contenders

What they are up to today:

Hillary Clinton (D-NY) - Rejected her campaign aide's advice to skip Iowa in favor of subsequent primaries, but because the news got out her campaign is in overdrive denying any intention of doing so. She will campaign in Iowa again this weekend.

Rudy Giuliani (R-NY) - Cites John Edwards' rejection of the term "Global War on Terror" as proof that Democrats are in denial about terrorism. A new Gallup poll assigns him the highest favorability rating among the six major candidates of either party at 62%, with Edwards second at 56%.

Mitt Romney (R-MA) - If you guessed that Hillary Clinton got the lowest favorability score in that Gallup poll, you are wrong. Romney is 26 points behind Clinton at 27%. (Edwards, Obama, McCain and Clinton are all bunched together between 53% and 56%.)

John Edwards (D-NC) - Isn't treated altogether kindly in a new memoir by Robert Shrum, the political consultant who helped out with Edwards' U.S. Senate campaign. Shrum writes that Edwards confessed to being uncomfortable around gays, and elsewhere refers to him as "a Clinton who hadn't read the books."

Sam Brownback (R-KS) - Trots out Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff known as "Jane Roe" in the 1973 Supreme Court abortion ruling Roe v. Wade who has become an anti-abortion icon, to prop up his flagging campaign.

Al Gore (D-TN) - The non-candidate appears on tonight's "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "Late Show with David Letterman."

Ron Paul (R-TX) - Assigned remedial reading for Giuliani after the latter upbraided him in the last GOP debate for saying that U.S. policy in the Middle East provoked the 9/11 attack. His list: "Imperial Hubris" by Michael Scheuer, "Dying to Win" by Robert Pape, "Blowback" by Chalmers Johnson, and the 9/11 Commission Report.

News and Notes: Presidential Candidates

What are those would-be CIC's up to?

Duncan Hunter - The national security-obsessed California Congressman announced the launch of his "The Right Stuff Express" RV tour yesterday, featuring legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager. Playing off John McCain's well-known "The Straight Talk Express" bus tours, Hunter will begin his RV tour by travelling around South Carolina this week.

Al Gore - The Democratic non-candidate is getting a lot of media play, from the New York Times' sunday magazine feature about his big plans on global warming and yesterday's review of his new book out today to two new pieces on Huffington Post yesterday (one promoting Gore individually and the other pumping a Gore-Obama ticket), to a laudatory column by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post today:

Whatever flaws he has, Gore suffered through an extreme injustice with great dignity. His revenge is to have been right about a lot of things: right about the power of the Internet, right about global warming and right about Iraq.

John McCain - Reacting perhaps to yesterday's Des Moines Register poll that showed Mitt Romney with a substantial lead in Iowa, the Arizona senator ripped the former Massachusetts governor yesterday for attacking the compromise immigration reform bill now under consideration in the Senate. Perhaps Romney's solution to the immigration crisis is "to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn," McCain said, alluding to a newspaper report that a landscaping crew at Romney's gubernatorial mansion included illegal aliens. McCain also intimated that Romney's views are dictated by political expediency, saying that McCain might "wait a couple of weeks and see if the winds change and Mitt comes back around."

Hillary Clinton - Who benefits the most from Florida's decision to advance its primary to the very early date of January 29th? A chart compiled by Chris Bowers at MyDD.com shows that the average of three recent polls puts the former First Lady well ahead of nearest rival Barack Obama in Florida (41.3% to 18.%). It is the biggest number for Clinton among the various early-primary states, according to the chart.