A few days ago, in a disheartening display of more of the same, Clinton joined McCain in supporting the suspension of the federal gasoline tax this summer. In contrast, Obama continued to oppose the tax suspension. With key primaries coming up in Indiana and North Carolina and in a clumsy attempt to court the hard-pressed middle class, Clinton has abandoned principle for a moment of possible political gain. Obama, who seems to be remembering that he is always at his best when he levels with the voters, deserves credit for doing the right thing on this issue.

This latest bit of political gamesmanship is part of Clinton’s newest attack line: Barak Obama is out of touch with the concerns of average Americans. After a year of intense campaigning and constant travel I’m quite confident that both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama are fully aware of the concerns of the American public. It’s a contrived argument—and Hillary knows it is. Anyone who gets in a car or doesn’t have a million bucks in the bank knows that the middle class is feeling the squeeze. The answer to that squeeze is policies that generate real wealth and then work to ensure that the middle class shares in the wealth they help generate.

Revitalizing the economy won’t be accomplished by sending rebate checks in the mail or defunding our infrastructure. We need to invest in science and technology, build a fossil fuel-free green economy and help working Americans and their kids get the education they need to participate in the global economy.

The war in Iraq is another drain on our economy, as amply demonstrated by my Columbia colleague, Joseph Stiglitz in his new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (co authored with Linda Bilmes). Clinton and Obama both know this. While I realize it’s too much to ask that the Presidential campaign be used to educate the country about the real challenges we face, the candidates could at least avoid misleading the American public.

The gasoline tax is needed to build and maintain our roads and bridges. Lower fuel taxes will encourage more driving and add to air pollution and global warming. A lower gasoline tax is bad public policy and it really saddens me to see someone I admire as much as Hillary Clinton sink to this level to try to squeeze out a few more votes in this campaign.

I suspect that most people can see through these blatant political maneuvers and they don’t really work. People think that gasoline is too expensive, but they also know we need to figure out a way to reduce our addiction to it. We have had seven years of politics that appealed to self interest and fear. The result of that has been an endless war and an economy on the skids.

Thee surest sign that Senator Clinton is on the wrong side of this issue was President Bush’s announcement in the Rose Garden on Tuesday that he was open to the idea of suspending the gasoline tax. Of course, the President thinks the real answer to high energy prices is additional oil exploration and refining capacity. Perhaps his Texas oil friends are envious of the profits being made by BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's two biggest oil producers, who recently announced combined first quarter profits of $17 billion. We have paid a heavy price by allowing our energy policies to be dominated by the oil industry.

We need fresh thinking and honesty from our politicians on energy policy. We see signs of honesty from Obama, less and less of it from Clinton, little of it from McCain and of course none of it from President Bush.

Tomorrow’s vote marks the first time balloting in a G.O.P. contest is restricted only to registered Republicans, leaving out the independents who boosted Mr. McCain’s performance in New Hampshire, Michigan, and South Carolina. At the mercy of a party base that despises him for his positions on immigration, campaign finance reform and a dozen other apostasies, the thinking goes, McCain faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of Mitt Romney.

Actually, Florida may not be quite the uphill fight for McCain that conventional wisdom suggests. It’s true that polls have McCain and Romney running neck and neck and it’s certainly possible that Romney, buoyed by a strong debate performance last week and a spike in voter interest in the domestic economy, could emerge victorious.

But McCain is better positioned to engineer a victory than many realize.

For one thing, the focus on the Republicans-only nature of the Florida primary has ignored a potentially mitigating statistic: Independents account for a much smaller share of the Florida electorate than they do in states with open primaries.

Consider New Hampshire, where support from independents paved the way for McCain triumphs in 2000 and 2008. Independents account for 44 percent of the New Hampshire electorate, while Republicans make up only 30 percent. Many of those independents lean decidedly toward the G.O.P. but have no incentive to declare themselves Republicans, since they are free as independents to vote in the G.O.P. primary anyway. Since these moderate, independent-minded de facto Republicans are not technically enrolled in the party, New Hampshire’s registered Republicans become a more conservative and ideologically rigid bunch.

But in Florida, the closed primary provides a powerful incentive for those same G.O.P.-leaning moderates to enroll in the party. As a result, only 22 percent of the state’s electorate is independent—half the New Hampshire total—while 38 percent are registered Republicans. On the whole, this means that a larger share of registered Republicans in Florida are open to supporting a maverick like McCain than in New Hampshire. In other words, by forcing voters to declare a party or surrender their right to vote in primaries, Florida may have encouraged more moderates to join the party.

And, in fact, the Florida G.O.P. has a history of supporting candidates who are not always rigid adherents to conservative orthodoxy. Charlie Crist, the first-term governor who endorsed McCain on Saturday night, has embraced aggressive civil rights and voting rights enforcement, environmental protection, and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers (ridiculed as “amnesty” by Romney and others). And as the state’s attorney general in 2005, some on the right attacked him for not using his office to keep Terri Schiavo on life support. To secure the Republican nomination in 2006, Crist handily defeated an opponent who ran on conservative social themes.

Connie Mack, a two-term U.S. Senator who retired after the 2000 election, and Jeb Bush, the state’s governor from 1999 until 2007, also made successful appeals to moderates and non-traditional Republican voters in their political careers (even if Bush governed more conservatively).

It would be inaccurate to label Crist, Mack, or Bush as moderates (Bush especially), since they all hew to conservative orthodoxy on most issues. But McCain falls into this category as well. He has split with his party on some high profile occasions but for the most part has racked up a record of exemplary conservatism over his 25 years in Congress. To be sure, he remains anathema to a significant chunk of the Florida G.O.P.—hence Romney’s status as co-leader in the polls—but candidates like McCain have won Florida Republican primaries many times before.

Moreover, there are other signs that McCain may be on the verge of a win, however narrow, in Florida. Late last week he picked up the backing of Mel Martinez, his Senate colleague and an influential figure among the state’s Cuban-American voters. And the last-minute backing of Crist, who has racked up high approval ratings since becoming governor, sends a powerful message to Republicans who have been considering McCain but who have had reservations.

Romney, who has finally found his natural campaigning voice, remains a formidable contender. If he wins on Tuesday, Republicans will face the real prospect of a split verdict on February 5 and a nomination battle that could drag on into the early spring.

But, in part because of the media’s intense focus on the closed primary issue, McCain has the opportunity to deliver a fatal blow to his rivals. With a win, the media will celebrate McCain’s newfound appeal to the party base, the final test of his burgeoning front-runnerhood. From there, he would be well-positioned to score a sweeping national victory on Feb. 5, keyed by Republicans who consider him acceptable enough and who are anxious to unite behind someone—anyone.

“I have a long-standing and strong community with the Jewish community here and in Israel,” said Giuliani. He told the congregants at the Hahn Judaic Campus of the Boca Raton Synagogue about a trip to Israel during which he witnessed what he called the reunification of the Ethiopian Jews.

Speaking of Israel he said, “It’s a place that all Jewish people, however separated, however far removed, can come home.”

He said that he worked to deport Nazis as a prosecutor; that he told Ehud Olmert, when the Israeli prime minister was mayor of Jerusalem, “that we [New York] had more Jewish citizens than he did” and called anti-Semitism a “disease that we must have zero tolerance for.”

He outlined his plan for peace in the Middle East, included a demand for the recognition of the Israeli state by the Palestinians and a commitment by the Palestinian state to fight terrorism. (Echoing some of his more realist foreign policy advisors, Giuliani warned against creating a Palestinian state if it meant spawning another enemy of America in what he called the “terrorists war on us.”)

“At the core of my view of foreign policy is to be realistic,” said Giuliani, who didn’t mention the “drain the swamps” views of Norman Podhoretz, whose blurb supporting Giuliani was printed on fronds placed on the congregations seats.

Giuliani was warmly welcomed by the crowd, who often greeted his tough talk on terrorism with applause. They particularly responded to his boiling down of American foreign policy under a Giuliani administration. “To summarize in one word, offense,” said Giuliani. “We have to be on offense.”

“I’m running for President of the United States,” he added, because “I can lead that effort, uh, the best.”

After he finished his speech and people finished applauding and started leaving, Giuliani, as if in an afterthought, took the microphone again.

“I want to urge you—this is sort of a test, how many of you have voted already?” said Giuliani, who is counting on votes cast before his national plunge in the polls to help him in Florida.

Less than a dozen hands went up. One person clapped.

“Wow, that’s a lot,” he said. “Now you cannot vote again, but for those of you who haven’t, please vote, and I would very much like to have your vote.”

On the seats are these Rudy fliers, which point out "Voices of support from the Jewish Community" including blurbs from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and his foreign policy advisor Norman Podhoretz. ("Rudy Giuliani is the one who can be trusted to stand up for Israel in good times and bad, and to stand staunchly against its enemies whether in the Middle East or in the American academic world," says Podhoretz.)

In other words, Giuliani, once the Republican front-runner, has been relegated to the long-shot role played by John Edwards on the Democratic side: that of the suddenly awakened moral conscience tsk-tsk-ing on the front-runners’ shoulders.

“I think this election should be about positive things,” said Giuliani. “What we can do. What we can accomplish.”

Earlier, speaking to a tiny room filled with about 100 supporters, he had characterized the sniping of Romney and McCain as similar to the poisonous volleys between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and said that it made no sense for Republicans to wade into the negative campaigning that the Democrats were struggling to get out of.

In the press conference, which took place under the watchful gaze of Giuliani’s senior political advisor Anthony Carbonetti in the back of the room, the former mayor refused to take the bait on one question: What had he thought about McCain's demand of an apology from Romney, over his remarks on a “secret timetable” in Iraq?

“I’m not going to get involved in the back and forth,” Giuliani said, adding “I think it would be far better if we all remained positive.”

The reporters in the room weren’t exactly buying the softer, sweeter Giuliani.

A reporter asked, “Mayor, you’ve been known to lob some harsh words yourself—the words 'sanctuary mansion' come to mind—some people think you are being nice now because you no longer believe you are going to win, what do you say about that?”

“The reason I am being positive is that I believe that it is the way to win,” Giuliani responded.

Giuliani responded to questions about his lagging poll numbers in Florida by saying, “Florida will pick me. I think the reality is that there is a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of early voting.”

"Hi, nice to meet you, and yes, we can speak," said Brian Lawson, a 22-year-old, who runs the blog New Hampshire Presidential Watch. "This is the fifth debate I've been to and they're still saying the same thing," he said.

In the background, TVs and speakers showed Republicans were trading barbs. But with wireless internet on the fritz, Lawson said he was making up the time by playing solitaire. He was also making new friends.

Sitting nearby in the 15th row was a Daily Kos blogger--who decided to write a Republican debate wrap-up at the end instead of liveblogging it as it happened because the wireless internet was s spotty in the last full row, which he was sharing with a pair of bloggers from Wonkette.

Also nearby was 24-year-old video-blogger Jacob Soboroff, of "Why Tuesday?", a voting awareness group. Soboroff was wearing a flannel shirt, a grey skully, a henley with enough buttons unbuttoned to expose a healthy dose of chest hair. A fellow "Why Tuesday?" colleague had curly hair and a skully.

Meanwhile, Lawson surveyed the row of youngish bloggers. "I've been able to talk to people who I've emailed before, but never met. Like I just met Dean today."

He pointed to a young man in a green sweater who he said ran a blog called Blue Hampshire. "I've seen his picture online before and I remember seeing his face so I introduced myself and said, 'Oh, you must be Dean.'" (Later, the site characterized Mitt Romney's performance: "Did anyone notice that Romney just got pwned?")

They were sitting next to each other in "meatspace," waiting for a signal.

Fernando Suarez, the 28-year-old beat reporter for CBS News, was punching furiously at his laptop trying to find a new hotel while waiting for Hillary Clinton to show up at an 8 a.m. event here.

He' s staying at a Radisson in Nashua, about a 20-minute trip from Manchester, the capital for all New Hampshire reporting where her campaign bus departs from. It's a little farther than he would have liked, but with price tags at more than $350 a night and the entire world descending here this morning, the options to get any closer were few.

"Sadly, we don't have anytime to do this," he said.

Even with a new hotel room it wouldn't make much of a difference. "I generally don't even find a time to read or put on the TV to watch anything. I just sit there and think about what else I should be reading and what else I'm missing."

He's been covering politics for CBS News for six years, and he's been covering Hillary for the last three months. All the beat reporters here were pretty sleepy after taking a sad Charter flight between Iowa and New Hampshire that arrived here after 4 in the morning.

But if she's not stopping to sleep between Iowa and New Hampshire, neither can they.

"That keeps me moving," Suarez said. "It's like, 'uh, you're 60.'"

Here is the fund-raising letter that campaign manager Michael DuHaime sent out this morning, in which he uses the now-familiar reasoning that Rudy will be fine as long as he wins in Florida, New York and New Jersey.

Whether those states will take him seriously without a good showing in a single early primary is another story.

Email in full:

The former Arkansas Governor, suddenly the front-runner in Iowa, was supposed to come under intense fire from Mitt Romney at this afternoon’s Republican debate in Des Moines—the last head-to-head encounter between the candidates before the January 3 caucuses.

And the set-up seemed perfect for Mr. Romney, whose Mormonism has probably contributed to the stunning rise of Mr. Huckabee, a personable Baptist preacher who may be more culturally compatible with Iowa’s formidable bloc of Christian conservatives.

After deftly avoiding direct criticism of Mr. Romney’s church for months, Mr. Huckabee erred in the run up to the debate by telling a reporter that he didn’t know much about the Mormon faith—and then asking if “Mormons believe that Jesus and the Devil are brothers.” This seemingly set the stage for Mr. Romney, who delivered a well-crafted and highly publicized speech on religion last week, to confront Mr. Huckabee and to claim the moral high ground.

No doubt Mr. Romney had a fancy bit of stagecraft for such a moment all planned out, but the moment never presented itself. Nor was there an opening for Mr. Romney – or for any of the seven other candidates who might have been interested in doing so—to needle Mr. Huckabee about any of his other vulnerabilities, many of which have only come to light in the last few days.

Chalk it up to moderator Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Des Moines Register, which co-sponsored the debate with Iowa Public Television. Ms. Washburn, unlike previous moderators (who have generally come from national networks), showed almost no interest in creating conflict and tension on the stage, sternly moving the proceedings along at a brisk pace and largely sticking to policy topics—deficit spending and tax equity featured prominently – that minimized the risk of strife between the candidates. The wonkish tone was reinforced by a restrained studio audience that announced its presence with lukewarm applause and mild laughter only a handful of times during the 90-minute broadcast.

In this environment, Mr. Romney and anyone else itching to take a swing at Mr. Huckabee surely realized, trying to use a 30-second answer to segue into a full-throttled attack on an opponent would have seemed jarringly discordant, an unbecoming violation of the Good Government spirit of the proceedings.

And so, for the most part, the candidates stuck with providing straight answers to Ms. Washburn’s questions, rarely speaking out of turn (except for Alan Keyes, who proved why it was unwise to invite him when he butted in as Ms. Washburn asked a question about education and said, “Your unfairness is becoming so apparent that the voters of Iowa must understand there is a reason for it”).

Mr. Huckabee, whose answers were often sandwiched between responses from second-tier candidates, was largely free to do what he is best at: Smile and recite pithy and folksy sound bites.

To a question about taxes, he reiterated his well-established support for a “fair tax,” arguing that any system of taxation should make sure that “the rich aren’t going to be made poor, but maybe the poor will be made rich.”

On health care, he pleaded for preventive medicine—“where we kill the snake, and not just treat the snakebites.” And when the loss of American jobs came up, he called for a more efficient, business-friendly government, saying, “I can’t part the Red Sea, but I do believe I can part the red tape.”

Ms. Washburn—unlike most of the moderators from the national networks would have done—made no effort to draw Mr. Romney and Mr. Huckabee into any kind of a dialogue. The closest Mr. Romney came to taking a shot at Mr. Huckabee came very late in the debate, when he good-naturedly suggested that he, and not Mr. Huckabee, had racked up the best education record of any Governor. The worst it got for Mr. Huckabee was in the closing seconds, when—as Ms. Washburn frantically interrupted him and partially drowned him out—the hapless Tom Tancredo suggested that Mr. Huckabee had been weak on immigration.

The subject of religion only came up briefly, when Ms. Washburn asked Mr. Huckabee how he would apply his faith to education and health care issues. He replied that he would make sure that students and sick people should all be treated equally, regardless of their economic background. At no point did Mr. Huckabee’s remark about Mormonism come up. Had, say, Tim Russert been moderating, you can rest assured the topic would have been broached early and often.

In many ways this has been a tough week for Mr. Huckabee, who has dealt with an embarrassing series of revelations about some past statements and intense questions about his ethical conduct as Governor and his role in the parole of a convicted rapist who went on to commit a murder. But not a word of any of this was breathed in Des Moines today.

Today’s debate was the first scheduled since Mr. Huckabee became a top-tier national player. And it was also the last one before Iowans caucus in three weeks. For Mr. Huckabee, this was no small blessing.