GOP Candidates Stump Across U.S. for Feb. 5 Support

And, Evan, where are the Republicans putting their money? And do they have a lot to spend?

EVAN TRACEY, TNS Media Intelligence: Well, the short answer is they don't have much to spend, and they're not putting it very many places. We've seen the Republicans essentially puddle-jump from primary to primary, focusing their money on the next race at hand.

We saw that with Senator McCain, where he spent very heavily at the very later parts of the Florida primary, and now they're just starting to ramp up in some of these February 5 states.

Governor Romney has focused his efforts into California. Senator McCain has focused his efforts into Missouri. And besides that, the rest of the advertisers have been basically on national cable, which tells me it's kind of an efficient way for the campaigns to get their message out, because they don't have a lot of cash on hand.

RAY SUAREZ: So you're saying Florida was so spend-heavy that a lot of Super Tuesday states aren't even seeing ads, except for right now?

EVAN TRACEY: Yes, that's exactly what happened. I mean, the Republicans have put all their resources, basically, into the primary that was at hand. And even in victory, it takes awhile to get ramped back up and have the money to start to translate that into ad buys, and especially when you have so much ground to cover, like you do on these Feb. 5 states.

So, really, Senator McCain right now has been somewhat national-focused with cable. And Governor Romney has been putting a lot of money into California, probably about a million dollars a day at this point. But, again, there's only very few days, and advertising works over time. It's not going to be a silver bullet in these really compressed time frames.

AD NARRATOR: As a prisoner of war, John McCain was inspired by Ronald Reagan.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), Arizona: I enlisted as a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution.

AD NARRATOR: Guided by strong conservative principles, he'll cut wasteful spending and keep taxes low. A proud social conservative who will never waiver. The leadership and experience to call for the surge strategy in Iraq that is working.

John McCain, the true conservative, ready to be commander-in-chief on day one.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: I'm John McCain, and I approve this message.

RAY SUAREZ: Evan, for a lot of this race, John McCain has had a lot less money to spend than Mitt Romney. How does that show in the ad campaign?

EVAN TRACEY: Well, Governor Romney has probably outspent McCain about three-to-one by our data at this point. McCain has been identified with the surge, not only in Iraq, but also with an advertising surge strategy, spent about a million dollars a month leading into New Hampshire, then has basically spent about a million dollars a week heading into the next states of Michigan and South Carolina and, in Florida, spent very close in the final week to what Mayor Giuliani had spent in about five weeks.

So McCain has really been just, again, turning the volume up very loud in these primary states that lead up to Feb. 5. And the themes are very consistent to this ad, very much on his foreign policy experience and his biography.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's take a look at one of Mitt Romney's ads. It's called "Experience Matters."

FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY (R), Massachusetts: Hillary Clinton wants to run the largest enterprise in the world. She hasn't run a corner store. She hasn't run a state. She hasn't run a city. She has never run anything.

And the idea that she could learn to be president as an internship just doesn't make any sense.

I have spent my life running things. I've learned how to run a business. I've learned how to run a state. I ran the Olympics. In each case, I brought change.

And if there's ever been a time we need a change in Washington to bring strength to America, it's now.

I'm Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.

RAY SUAREZ: How is Governor Romney's strategy different?

EVAN TRACEY: Well, Ray, this ad right now is the one that he's running exclusively in these February 5 contests. Clearly, it's an ad that he had in rotation earlier on, so I think at this point in the race he's really dancing with who brung him, basically, with this message of trying to draw a contrast to Hillary Clinton, but also drawing attention to his business record.

And, literally, that's really how he's trying to close the argument with these conservative voters, is to really pivot back onto his biography, as well as his business experience.

So this is, I think, what you're going to see from him, certainly through tomorrow, and we'll see what happens after that.

RAY SUAREZ: We tried to get a Mike Huckabee ad, but we were not successful. Are Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul very much in evidence in media advertising?

EVAN TRACEY: Well, Huckabee has been fairly quiet since South Carolina. He's had some national cable buys up, spending a couple hundred thousand dollars at the most, really just trying to fire through his themes about dissolving the IRS if elected.

Ron Paul has been showing up in some random markets. We've seen him in Honolulu, in Washington state, in North Dakota, in Austin, Texas, but really not spending a lot of money. He may have the most cash-on-hand right now of any Republican.

RAY SUAREZ: Evan Tracey, we'll be back later with the Democrats. Thanks.

EVAN TRACEY: Thanks.

Dan, does the reporting that you and others have done jibe with what the polls say now about the Republican race, that McCain is surging?

DAN BALZ, Washington Post: I think that's right. I mean, all the evidence is coming out of Florida. He did get a real boost out of winning that state.

It was the first contest in which was limited to Republicans only. He was able to win it. They've been a difficult constituency for him. And I think it gave him a surge of support that we're seeing in other states.

Now, there's some competitiveness around the country. The polls in California have tightened up a little bit, but Mitt Romney obviously hopes to do pretty well out there. But at this point, both the map and the momentum seem to be clearly with John McCain.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, map and momentum with McCain?

LINDA DOUGLASS, National Journal: Absolutely. I mean, all these leaders, Republican leaders around the country are coalescing around him. And there are leaders who were not for him who are now, some might say, as his mother might say, holding their noses and cozying up to him.

The California thing, though, is interesting in a couple of ways. Dan is right that the polls are tightening up there. But the election, the primary in California is winner-take-all by congressional district.

There are more Democratic districts than there are Republican districts. So some of the pollsters who've looked at this and analyzed this say that actually Republicans who live in Democratic districts in California could have a lot more power in this race, and that could help McCain in California.

JIM LEHRER: How would that help McCain?

LINDA DOUGLASS: Because it's an equal number of votes per congressional district. Every district, all 53 in California, has the same number of delegates. So if it's true that there are moderate Republicans living in Democratic districts, the moderate Republicans would have more sway, and that could help McCain.

JIM LEHRER: I see.

Now, Dan, as we saw on the clip at the beginning, McCain and Romney went after each other even today, I mean, head on, taking each other on. Is that working? They must think it's working or they wouldn't be doing it right up to the end.

DAN BALZ: Well, for Governor Romney, he has to make the argument that John McCain is not sufficiently conservative to lead a conservative party. And Senator McCain is trying to do everything possible to muddy that argument by drawing attention to what he says is a record in Massachusetts that is not effective or particularly conservative.

So what's interesting is, in the advertising we've seen, the advertising is very positive, as we saw here just a minute ago.

JIM LEHRER: Right, absolutely.

DAN BALZ: On the campaign trail, they're going negative. The reason they're not doing negative advertising is because neither of these candidates has had the time to run a lot of positive advertising in these Feb. 5 states.

JIM LEHRER: To kind of introduce themselves, you mean, first.

DAN BALZ: They have to introduce themselves. They want to come off as positive. But on the campaign trail, the real argument is going on. And I would say that that argument is the more important one at this moment.

JIM LEHRER: But speaking of California, back to your point, Linda. This kind of taking -- this exchange between Romney and McCain, how does it affect moderate Republicans, who you say might have a little more sway than people think?

LINDA DOUGLASS: Well, certainly the polling out there shows that moderate Republicans are largely for McCain. Something like 50 percent of them are for McCain.

There's a real race for conservative Republicans in California. And Romney is absolutely appealing to those Republicans.

California Republicans are generally very conservative. But, again, you know, because the delegates are evenly distributed, they may not have the power in numbers that they normally have.

What's going on now with the conservatives all around the country, the talk show people, the magazine writers, and so forth, is really, I think, a very last-gasp effort to try to stop McCain through Romney tomorrow.