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CAMPAIGN 2008

Candidates tweak strategy ahead of Tuesday's primary

MILFORD, N.H.

 A day after the Iowa caucuses emphatically redrew the political landscape, the presidential candidates have descended on New Hampshire, modulating their pitches, appropriating their rivals' catch phrases and appealing to the voters to give them a chance.

Arriving exhausted Friday and with no time for letup, the winners worried about getting attacked and the non-winners worried about how to stop their opponents' momentum just four days before the first-in-the nation primary.

Sen. Barack Obama, who trounced his opponents in Iowa, sought to keep his good fortune going with yet another stirring address, this time to activists at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's One Hundred Club dinner here.

"There's no destiny we cannot fulfill. That?s been the premise of this campaign," he told an audience of 3,000 that had greeted him by pressing forward into the center of the Hampshire Dome in a frenzy of chanting and signwaving. Sen. Hillary Clinton, who finished a disappointing third in Iowa and is under renewed pressure to do well in New Hampshire, pressed her case that voters need to slow down and think about what they are doing in embracing Obama. "It's hard to know exactly where he stands," she said of Obama, shortly after arriving in the state.

By evening, Clinton suggested that Obama offered "false hopes" in her own speech to the One Hundred Club dinner.

"There are two big questions for voters in New Hampshire. One is, who will be the best president on Day One. Second, who can we nominate who will go the distance against the Republicans?" she said. "As we know, the Republicans will not give up the White House without a fight."

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who finished second in Iowa, was harshest of all, insinuating his two leading Democratic opponents could be bought and sold.

"We're up against two celebrity candidates who between them have raised over $200 million," Edwards told an audience of several hundred in Nashua. "But here's the good news: the people of New Hampshire have got a little bit of an independent streak, don't they? And they like to shake things up a little bit. And we're not going to have an auction in New Hampshire. We're going to have an election on Tuesday."

Meanwhile, the Republicans battled from the first moments of the day as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney went after Sen. John McCain, his chief rival in New Hampshire. Romney lost the Iowa caucuses to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, but in New Hamp- shire thus far, Huckabee has remained largely out of the fray and at the bottom of the polls. "The message I got out of Iowa is that people said they want change," Romney told reporters in Portsmouth. "The two Washington insiders, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, both lost."

Romney touted his changeagent credentials, including his work at Bain Capital, his rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics and his tenure as governor of what he calls "the bluest of the blue states." By contrast, he mocked McCain?s Washington experience.

The McCain campaign dismissed Romney's efforts as a ploy by the governor to regain his footing here after faltering in Iowa.

"The only thing Mitt Romney has changed are his positions on every issue of importance in this election," said McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker. In the hours after his Iowa win, Huckabee told reporters that he did not plan to change his message for Granite State voters, but he surely tailored it at his only appearance on the stump Friday, when he focused more heavily on his proposal for replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax.

Unlike in Iowa, Huckabee also began his speech by discussing immigration reform - a popular issue here--and proceeded to praise states' rights and New Hampshire's strong local governments.

The candidate, a Baptist minister, also only mentioned God a few times, far less than he did in Iowa, which is home to significantly more evangelical Christians.

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Debates to set stage

The stakes will be high when presidential candidates take the stage for prime-time debates Saturday, three days before the New Hampshire primary.

Host ABC said it hoped to encourage more conversation and interaction among the candidates during the debates, which will both be moderated by Charles Gibson. They begin at 6 p.m. CST with the Republicans and air from St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. Democrats take the stage about 90 minutes after the Republicans.

The debates will be less crowded because ABC News is excluding GOP candidate Duncan Hunter and Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. The candidates failed to meet benchmarks for their support that were outlined before Thursday's Iowa caucus, the network said Friday.

After his exclusion, Kucinich filed a complaint with the FCC. He argued that ABC is violating equal-time provisions by barring him.

-- Associated Press

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