N.H. Set to Test McCain, Romney in Fluid GOP Fight

JUDY WOODRUFF: Romney himself told me he's in a much stronger position than that.

MITT ROMNEY: Well, I see myself coming out having beaten three household names that I frankly didn't know I'd be able to actually get in the same contest with, and that was McCain, Giuliani and Thompson. I'm going to be facing McCain here in New Hampshire, so if I can do the same thing here that I did there, I'll feel great.

NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: You'll win the gold here in New Hampshire.

MITT ROMNEY: I'm going to go for the gold here. The silver there just to get started.

NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: To get warmed up.

MITT ROMNEY: Yes, to get warmed up, there you go.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Voter Gwen Boran likes what Romney has to say.

GWEN BORAN, New Hampshire Voter: On the one hand, the fact that he has been so successful has turned off a lot of people. But on the other hand, it proves that he can set goals, achieve goals, surround himself with the right kind of people to achieve those goals, and I think that's going to work well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In TV spots and interviews, Romney is hammering at his principal challenger here.

MITT ROMNEY: We have always said that John McCain is a person of integrity and character, an American hero. But I just disagree with him on main issues, like taxation, where he voted against the Bush tax cuts, and illegal immigration, where he would have opened our borders, frankly, to let all those that have come here illegally stay here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You've also said that for John McCain to say he's an agent of change is laughable, that he's a figure of Washington, that he is Washington, in so many words, and yet this is the same person who's been seen as the maverick Republican. How do you square that?

MITT ROMNEY: Oh, very simple. He's been a maverick against the Republicans, but he's lined up with the Democrats, where he's been the maverick.

So McCain-Feingold, campaign finance, took away some of our First Amendment rights and badly hurt the Republican Party in fundraising. He also stood up for this immigration bill, which would have allowed illegal immigrants to all stay in this country indefinitely.

Some people call that maverick; I just call it wrong.

After all the years there, and all the battling, and all the straight talk, what's changed? What is it he said, what has he done that's changed Washington? My whole campaign from the beginning has been a campaign of change.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: I don't really like this tit-for-tat very much, but the fact is I made the greatest change that anybody could make, I think, in that I was one of those responsible for the change in strategy in Iraq, which has saved many American lives and, certainly in my view, is succeeding.

You know, I didn't get voted Miss Congeniality in the Senate for nothing. Ask Jack Abramoff if I'm not an agent for change, or Donald Rumsfeld, or all those people that I have struggled against. I believe I have the qualities and the judgment to lead this nation in the transcendent challenge.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He's also been running ads against you, going after you on immigration, on voting against the Bush tax cuts. How damaging is all that?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: I don't think much. I think that the voters reject this kind of negative campaigning in New Hampshire. They're very sophisticated voters. I don't think it hurts very much.

JUDY WOODRUFF: McCain isn't running negative ads on TV. But in the first of two Republican debates over the weekend, there was a sarcastic tone when he addressed Romney.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: We disagree on a lot of issues. But I agree: You are the candidate of change.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The other Republicans running here don't have as much to prove tomorrow. The guitar-playing Mike Huckabee is a new face to most New Hampshire Republicans despite his lift out of Iowa. And the Christian conservatives he bowled over there aren't as plentiful here; hence, a fresh message.

FORMER GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE (R), Arkansas: I'm really proud to be in a state that understands a little bit about liberty and freedom, and certainly about independence.

New Hampshire declared its independence six months before the rest of the country finally came around to what you guys had figured out. And that is that independence and having a spirit of liberty is more important than anything else.

Patrick Henry said it, "Give us liberty or give us death." Your own license plate says, "Live free or die."

JUDY WOODRUFF: Fred Thompson is making less of an effort here in New Hampshire, as is Rudy Giuliani, who after 40 days of visits to the state is now looking down the road.

RUDY GIULIANI (R), Former Mayor of New York: I'm the candidate that can run in all 50 states. I'm the Republican candidate that can run -- I'm the Republican candidate that can contest states like this one, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, and New York, and Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and Delaware, and California, and Washington, and Oregon, and Minnesota, and all these states that we gave away in the past to the Democrats.

We've got to fight for those states and win them back, if we want a Republican president.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Libertarian Ron Paul with his call to end the Iraq war and shrink government has visible support in New Hampshire and is seen as a wild card.

DAVID CARNEY: And this Ron Paul army, the Paulinistas some of the conservative talk shows talk about, if they are going to show up and register to vote and vote, they could increase his percentage well above what anybody is expecting. And sort of like Pat Buchanan did in '92 -- he never won, but everybody in the state wrote about how he beat President Bush.

Natalie Healy was considered Romney, but no longer.

NATALIE HEALY, New Hampshire Voter: I think Mitt is a brilliant businessman. I think he has a lot to offer, and I think he's proven he certainly has the executive qualities to run things and probably wasn't quite as strong as Rudy, as far as having proven any national defense policies or that ability. But I'm sure he could, but Rudy certainly stood up to that test already.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Republican Richard Feldman of Rindge, looking at the same issues, arrived at a different choice.

RICHARD FELDMAN, New Hampshire Voter: Well, McCain is certainly one of the more experienced candidates, the only one of the three Republicans at the top at the moment that really have international and foreign policy experience. And we live in a world where foreign issues affect us and even inter-merge with our domestic issues.

And, you know, who wants to buy a pig in the poke? You want to know what you're getting and not just hope for the best.

JUDY WOODRUFF: When McCain ran in 2000, he didn't win among Republicans. It was independents that put him over the top. But this year, polls show most New Hampshire independents are thinking Democratic.

DAVID CARNEY: Of the 40 percent of the voters in New Hampshire who are technically undeclared, or we call independent voters, two-thirds vote Democratic, one-third vote Republican. And he and Giuliani are fighting for that one-third vote.

NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: John McCain, yeah, he's our man!

JUDY WOODRUFF: What McCain needs coming down to the wire, Carney says, is one thing.

DAVID CARNEY: Turnout. He needs to make sure we don't have a bad storm, we don't have really bad weather. He wants his people to turn out, the veterans, the mainline Republicans, the Main Street Republicans. And those third of independents, he wants to get probably 60 percent of those independents that are going to vote in the Republican primary.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The weather forecast for Tuesday is unseasonably warm.