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AMES, Iowa (CNN) - Bill Clinton said Monday he was so impressed by his wife when they first started dating, he once tried to convince her she should dump him and focus on a political career of her own.
Hillary Clinton was "the most gifted person I'd ever met" and that "would be wrong for me to rob her of the chance to be what I thought she should be." "She laughed at me, and said, 'First I love you and, second, I'm not going to run for anything, I'm too hardheaded,'" he said. The former president is a major asset on the campaign trail. A Mason-Dixon poll released Sunday found that he garners equal or higher favorability ratings from Democratic primary voters than any other candidate, including his wife. Clinton commended his party's current crop of candidates: "as a lifelong Democrat, I love this election." "They're fighting a little now, they ought to, there are choices to be made," he added. Clinton ticked through his wife's battle scars and accomplishments ranging from education reform in Arkansas to his administration's failed efforts at health care reform. "I asked her to do the hardest thing of all, health care and we got whipped," he said of the current New York senator.
Watch Gore discuss the White House race and his own political future. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Vice President Al Gore denied again that there were any campaign plans in his immediate future, but told CNN Monday that he hadn't "ruled out getting back into the political process at some point" -- and that if he did return to political life, it would be to take another shot at the White House. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, speaking from the Oslo site of Monday's awards ceremony, told CNN's Jonathan Mann that he didn't expect to ever get back in the political process, but that "if I did get back, it would be as a candidate for president." He did not endorse any of the current Democratic candidates for president, and did not respond directly to a question about his view of New York Sen.
He added that "the political system as it now operates makes it very difficult" for any of the current crop of candidates to make climate change issues a top priority. Gore's political future has been the object of intense speculation since he received an Academy Award earlier this year for his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." Another White House bid would be the third for the former vice president, who also ran in 1988 and 2000.
Mike Huckabee found himself under fire from rival Republicans Monday, in the wake of a weekend of new polls that showed the former Arkansas governor surging in early primary states.
Fred Thompson's campaign kept up a steady stream of attack, criticizing Huckabee for everything from past support for ending the Cuban embargo to allegedly allowing state hard drives and servers to be destroyed while he was governor. And CNN's John King reports that former Massachusetts Gov.
Mitt Romney's campaign announced that it plans to run a television ad in Iowa that targets Huckabee's record on illegal immigration. The spot, which attacks him by name, hits the airwaves Tuesday. opposed driver's licenses for illegals," says the announcer. Supported in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants. Huckabee even supported taxpayer-funded scholarships for illegal aliens. Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said the ad was intended to highlight the difference between the former Massachusetts governor's "pro-enforcement record" - under assault after recent revelations that he employed illegal immigrants on his property - and Huckabee's somewhat softer stance in the past. Surveys have found that illegal immigration consistently ranks as one of the most important issues among likely Republican voters in Iowa. The new ad follows a Huckabee spot running in Iowa in which he highlights his new get-tough plan on illegal immigration. In "Secure Our Borders," Huckabee calls for "no amnesty" and says, "It ought to be at least as difficult to get across an international border as it is to get on an airplane in our own hometown."
Huckabee and Giuliani are in a virtual dead heat, a new poll shows. DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) -- Mike Huckabee's dramatic jump in the polls is going nationwide. The former Arkansas governor is in a virtual tie with Republican presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll out Monday. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, is backed by 24 percent of Republican voters nationally while Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, is at 22 percent. With the two-point difference well within the survey's sampling error of 5 percentage points, Huckabee is in a virtual tie with Giuliani. Mitt Romney is at 16 percent in the new poll, followed by Sen. Ron Paul of Texas at 6 percent, Congressman Duncan Hunter of California at 2 percent and Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado at 1 percent.
Complete poll results (pdf) The poll, conducted December 6-9, involved nationwide telephone interviews with 377 registered voters, including Republicans and independent voters who lean Republican. Huckabee is now the front-runner in the polls in Iowa, the first state to vote in the presidential primary process, taking the top spot from Romney, and he's also jumped dramatically in South Carolina, the first southern state to vote. Now he appears to be on the rise in national surveys as well. Two countrywide polls last week, Gallup/USA Today and Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg, put him in second place, a prelude to the results in the new CNN survey. Huckabee doubled his support in October and doubled it again in November, going from 5 percent in October to double digits last month to over 20 percent this month, in the CNN poll. "Huckabee's strength so far may be a positive, values-oriented message," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "He ranks first when GOP voters are asked who shares their Republican values and who has spent the least time criticizing his opponents. He also scores well on likeability and believability, although Giuliani beats him on those measures. "Huckabee places fourth, behind Giuliani, McCain and Romney, when Republicans are asked to rate the GOP candidates on experience."
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham is an ardent backer of McCain. NORTH AUGUSTA, South Carolina (CNN) -- Since this summer, with almost robotic consistency, Sen. Lindsey Graham has introduced his friend John McCain on the campaign trail in South Carolina as "the only candidate who can beat Hillary Clinton next November." Reporters covering McCain's presidential campaign could probably recite Graham's stump speech in their sleep. But on Monday, the day after a new poll showed Clinton's lead slipping in South Carolina, another name crept into Graham's warm-up act: "Our party needs a nominee who can be competitive all over the country, just not here in Aiken County. we're going to have a candidate that the independent voter will be drawn to."
Mike Huckabee made this promise: "As president, I commit that we would veto any legislation that would lift the embargo that is currently in place, because we must keep that pressure on." But that hard-line position on Cuba is an about-face for the former Arkansas governor.
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is launching a new radio ad there featuring noted African American poet and Winfrey pal Maya Angelou. Angelou, who first announced she was backing the New York senator's presidential bid earlier this year, calls Clinton a "strong woman and a protector of families," in the 60-second spot running on stations across the Palmetto State. "Each generation of African Americans stands on the shoulders of those who came before," Angelou also says in the ad. "Today, the challenges facing us threaten the dreams we have had for our children. We need a president with the experience and strength to meet those challenges." The ad comes in the wake of Winfrey's wildly popular tour of early-voting states with Obama over the weekend. The pair drew the biggest turnout in South Carolina, where African Americans make up more than 50 percent of Democratic primary voters. While Clinton once held a double digit lead in South Car...
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