Giuliani Turns Up the Campaign Heat in New Hampshire

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• GWEN IFILL:

  Next, Rudy Giuliani heating up New Hampshire. Ray Suarez has our Election '08 update.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Just a few weeks ago, Rudy Giuliani's campaign was outlining a national strategy, targeting several large states, and almost dismissing the importance of New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. But this weekend, the former New York City mayor launched a statewide bus tour of the Granite State, appearing at town hall meetings in Laconia and Hampton, marching in Salem's holiday parade, and greeting potential voters all along the way.

  But what surprised many political watchers was the tone of Giuliani's New Hampshire blitz. In speeches and interviews, he chose to level criticisms at only one of his Republican rivals, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who's leading in the New Hampshire polls.

  On fighting crime, cutting taxes, and providing affordable health care, Giuliani charged Romney had failed as a governor, prompting Romney to issue a point-by-point rebuttal.

  Jonathan Martin of Politico.com was with Giuliani in New Hampshire this weekend and joins us now, as does Matt Bai, author of the book "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics." He's also a contributing writer to the New York Times magazine and recently wrote an extensive profile of Rudy Giuliani.

  And, Jonathan Martin, until now, the Romney and Giuliani campaigns seemed to be running on different tracks, Giuliani with his "win big state" strategy and Romney with his "win early" strategy, but they had a head-on collision this last week.

• JONATHAN MARTIN, Politico.com:

  They sure did. I mean, Giuliani is making very obvious that he wants to not just play New Hampshire, but really win there, too. And there's three ways that we kind of know that now.

  The first is he's gone up there on TV. It's the first state where he's airing television ads, and it's, for right now at least, the only state where he's got TV ads. And I saw two of them in about an half-an-hour period on the Boston CBS affiliate in my hotel room on Saturday.

  Secondly, he's spending more time there. When you do a bus tour over two days with numerous stops — and he actually stayed over for a third day this morning, too — in the state where retail politicking is sort of a demand of the voters there, that sends a pretty strong signal.

  And then, lastly, the fact that he did use New Hampshire to launch some pretty tough attacks on Mitt Romney, you know, all three of those signs point to him really wanting to get a victory in one of these early states and thinking that New Hampshire is probably the best place to actually do it.