New Hampshire yesterday announced a Nov. 2 deadline for presidential candidates to get on the ballot in the state's first-in-the-nation primary, giving a drop-dead date to candidates who were contemplating a run, such as Newt Gingrich.

The secretary of state also made clear New Hampshire has not yet set a date for its primary, a key step that will determine just how compressed this year's primary calendar will be.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback last night completed his ongoing transition on immigration, embracing the position held by most conservatives that illegal aliens should not be granted a path to citizenship.

"I will not support new paths to citizenship," Brownback, a Kansas Republican, said during last night's debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore when asked how he would handle immigration, if elected.

That's critical because, for many conservatives, granting illegal aliens a path to citizenship outside the current law (which generally requires them to return home and wait) is tantamount to amnesty.

Despite a strong pro-life voting record and a history of siding with social conservatives, Brownback has failed to catch fire with those voters in the Republican primaries.

It's a big step for Brownback, who was listed as one of the original supporters of the 2006 McCain-Kennedy immigration-reform bill and had consistently defended the concept of legalizing illegal aliens with a path to citizenship.

His first change came earlier this year, after Brownback got blasted by Iowa voters for his stance. He announced in April that he no longer supported the 2006 bill, saying he finally had a chance to study it and had concluded it led to too much immigration.

His ambivalence was clear during this year's Senate vote on President Bush's immigration bill, when he voted for it, then switched and voted against it minutes later.

In yesterday's debate Brownback said he supports work-visas instead.

"I do think in the future we should look at different work-visa-type programs as a way to be able to deal with the problem that you're identifying, which is the realistic problem of where we are today," he said.

With the loss of Brownback, that leaves three Republican candidates who are on record supporting a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens, to varying degrees: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mike Huckabee.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Rudy Giuliani today collected the endorsement of former California Gov. Pete Wilson, but it's unclear whether that's a boon.

Wilson is often credited with turning California into a permanent Blue State because of how he handled immigration. He fought and won a referendum, Proposition 187, that would have denied illegal aliens many social services.

The measure was blocked by a federal court, and eventually California, under new Gov. Gray Davis, dropped the case, killing the law.

But the effects are still felt in electoral politics, with Hispanic voters voting overwhelmingly Democratic. Other than current Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, no other Republican has won the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat or carried the state in a presidential election since.

The problem for Giuliani is that he doesn't gain much support from the right of his party for having the nomination. The former governor was pro-choice and had a habit of angering conservatives in his state.

In announcing the endorsement, the Giuliani camp shied away from the contentious issues and focused on Wilson's time as mayor of San Diego where, the campaign said, Wilson led a revitalization that was similar to what Giuliani would later lead in New York.

— Stephen Dinan, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

Ryan Whitaker, a 23-year-old student from Provo, Utah, whose campaign commercial won Mitt Romney's design-your-own contest.

The Romney camp says Whitaker's 57-second ad will become the first amateur ad ever used as an official presidential campaign ad.

His ad, "Ready for Action," beat 128 other submissions, the Romney folks said.

In tone, it's a cross between a Chevy "Heartbeat of America" ad and one of those ads produced by colleges that run during Saturday football game broadcasts.

The Romney folks are only giving it a limited run -- once a day for a week in five Iowa and New Hampshire markets, beginning Oct. 3.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Rudy Giuliani met privately today with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and, according to Associated Press, said that as president he would keep U.S. troops in Iraq as long as necessary.

Photographers were allowed in long enough to record the two men sitting in chairs and chatting, but the rest of their meeting was closed, so it's impossible to know exactly what assurances Giuliani gave.

But it's worth remembering these sorts of meetings can come back to hurt candidates who are seen as conducting foreign policy or who end up talking out of school.

The best example was in 2004, when Sen. John Kerry, Democrats' presidential nominee that year, told a group of supporters he had met with leaders who told him they wanted President Bush out of office.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

When former Sen. George Allen, son of a former Redskins coach and a college football player himself, failed to materialize as a presidential candidate, someone had to pick up the mantle of the candidate with the bad football metaphors.

It turns out John McCain is the guy.

His campaign today sent supporters an e-mail from former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, who employed a passel of football analogies in his appeal for financial contributions to the campaign. Sunday is the end of the third reporting period for contributions.

Among the Staubach gems:

* "It's time to get in the game right now. We can't do our job in the fourth quarter unless we play hard in the third."

* "These next seven days are the last chance we have as a team of McCain supporters to huddle up and get ready for this fundraising deadline."

* "The clock is ticking and we're getting ready to make a final push to victory."

Feel free to add your own football analogies for the McCain campaign, but try to avoid comparisons to the Redskins. That's just too easy.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

The Club for Growth, notorious pot-stirrers, are back, and stirring like crazy -- this time pressing the case that Ted Stevens, the senior Republican in the U.S. Senate, could be vulnerable to a primary challenge from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The Club's political action committee released numbers from a poll taken two months ago showing that Alaska Republican voters would choose Palin over Stevens in a primary, 56 percent to 32 percent.

That came well before the latest charges about Stevens, including news last week that the FBI secretly taped the senator as part of a sting operation to ferret out corruption.

Stevens, who is up for re-election next year, is just one of several Alaska Republicans who have had to defend themselves from charges of corruption. And his role as the Republican most identified with pork-barrel spending also has put a target on his back.

Palin, meanwhile, is in her first year as governor, having run and won in November on a pledge to reform politics in Alaska. She is viewed as a candidate of the future, but could that future be now?

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Or, put another way, if he's good enough for these folks, that should be good enough for you.

As Rudy Giuliani goes before the NRA today, he's hoping the magic of some of his supporters can rub off on him.

His campaign last night offered reporters a list of lawmakers who have endorsed Giuliani who also hold an "A" rating from the NRA, presumably with the intent of convincing gun owners if those lawmakers can overlook Giuliani's gun-control past, so should they.

Curiously, the list is short on lawmakers from the South and Mountain West -- two areas usually associated with gun-rights voters.

Mr. Giuliani's campaign also took pains to note that the former New York mayor supports a recent federal court decision that ruled D.C. residents cannot be prevented from keeping a firearm in their homes.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Not to be outdone by Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, who have already expressed their feelings about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the U.S., Fred Thompson says he wouldn't admit the guy at all.

"If I were president of the United States none of this would have been an issue -- I wouldn't have let him into the country in the first place," he said.

A day after Giuliani promised to "set [Iran] back five or 10 years" if that nation appears close to obtaining nuclear weapons, Thompson took his own tough line: "If we don't get serious and act now -- before they build atomic weapons -- the stakes will be even higher, and our hand much weaker."

With most of the GOP candidates sharing a similar strategy on their approach to Iraq, could Iran be turning into the real primary-season foreign-policy difference-maker?

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Rudy Giuliani yesterday showed the rest of the presidential field how to handle saying something without saying everything.

In speaking about how he would tackle Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions, he said that if they come close to developing such a weapon, "we will prevent it, or we will set them back five or 10 years." My colleague Joseph Curl has the story here.

Compare Giulani's use of "strategic ambiguity" to Sen. Barack Obama, who got into trouble last month by saying he would take unilateral action against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally and then ruled out using nuclear weapons to respond to terrorists.

The criticism was swift and severe from members of both both parties, but Democrats were the fiercer, telling Obama he was showing his age and experience by talking beyond his brief.

Giuliani may have been a bit less than ambiguous in his strategic ambiguity, but in presidential politics, it turns out it's far better to rule military options in than to rule them out.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Despite a gaffe that showed he's not yet familiar with Washington-speak on abortion, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee won the values voters straw poll, held after the first-ever Values Voter debate Monday night.

The debate's relevance was undercut, though, by the absence of the four top Republican candidates, and it underscores another oddity of this election season -- the schizophrenic power of social conservatives.

By contrast, Democrats have attended forums sponsored by gay rights groups, a Spanish-language television network and various labor unions, and all made time to attend a debate aimed at black voters.

As for the values debate, Huckabee's gaffe was that he didn't know that the Mexico City policy -- which prevents U.S. federal funding from going to international family planning organizations that provide abortions -- is a U.S. policy, not a Mexican policy.

Sam Brownback, who is jostling with Huckabee for the slot of pro-life leader among the presidential candidates, jumped on the mistake, which his campaign called "ignorance of a major element of pro-life policy on the federal level."

Still, Huckabee didn't seem hurt too badly -- organizers said he topped the rest of the field, receiving nearly five times the voted of the other candidates.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

In the end President Bush didn't tap Ted Olson for attorney general, instead preferring a candidate who seems likely to draw less of a fight.

But it shouldn't come as a surprise that Bush's choice, Michael Mukasey, is also a friend of Rudy Giuliani's.

As this blog said last week, Giuliani's eye for talent is so good that the president seems intent on stealing some of it to serve in key positions in the administration's waning days.

Mukasey, a retired federal judge, received early support yesterday from key Democrats such as Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, who is usually a good barometer for how much opposition Democrats will put up against judicial or Justice Department nominees.

For its part the White House is conducting a delicate balancing act in selling their nominee. They don't want to do anything to upset Schumer and other Senate Democrats, and stress Mukasey's nonpartisanship, but also want to cast their choice as someone who will still pursue the Bush administration's vigorous legal war against terrorism suspects.

In a morning memo to reporters, here's how they described his role as judge in the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen deemed an enemy combatant: "He found that the Government had the right to hold Mr. Padilla as an enemy combatant without charging him for a crime. Judge Mukasey also granted a defense motion to allow Mr. Padilla to meet with his attorneys."

What that last sentence briefly hints at is Mukasey's ruling that Padilla be allowed to see his lawyers -- something the Bush administration opposed strenuously, arguing that it would hurt their interrogation.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, that is -- with his newest attack.

It's a Web ad Rudy Giuliani has posted on his campaign Web site attacking Clinton for switching on her support for the Iraq war and for questioning the honesty of Gen. David H. Petraeus earlier this week.

It's a fascinating move on several levels:

* It's a cross-party shot even as Giuliani now has another strong challenger on the Republican side in Fred Thompson.
* It's the first in-depth tussle between the two front-runners.
* And it's the first real exchange since these two almost fought it out in 2000 over the Senate seat Clinton now holds.

Giuliani has the presence and heft to take control of any debate on national security, as he showed in one of the early Republican debates when he rebuked fellow candidate Ron Paul for saying U.S. foreign policy provoked the terrorists.

But with Thompson claiming the lead in polls in South Carolina and Mitt Romney leading or running neck-and-neck in Iowa and New Hampshire, can Giuliani continue to ignore these guys?

Of course, given his strategy of appealing to conservatives as a Republican who can beat Clinton, he doesn't have much choice but to take her on.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Why does President Bush seem to want to keep raiding Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign for top talent?

Earlier this summer the president came and grabbed former Rep. Jim Nussle, who was helping Giuliani's Iowa campaign, to be the new Office of Management and Budget director. And now Bush appears to be considering Ted Olson, a Giuliani-backer, for the open position of attorney general.

Olson traveled with Giuliani in Iowa in August and Giuliani is now coming to the defense of his friend against attacks from Democrats and even some Republicans who say it's not worth fighting to have him confirmed.

In an interview with KSFO in San Francisco Giuliani said the ruckus is another example of how "partisanship trumps everything."

"I worked with Ted in the Justice Department. I used to consider him the conscience of the Justice Department. The man has enormous ethics," Giuliani said, adding that "having Ted Olson as attorney general wouldn't just be good for Republicans, it would be good for Democrats, it would be good for all Americans."

And for those wondering about how Giuliani would approach his own nominations as president, he gave an inkling: "Who is a Republican president going to appoint? Is he going to go appoint Democrats? I mean that doesn't make any sense. Every once in a while you do that, but that isn't generally what you do."

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Rudy Giuliani is turning next year's presidential election into a two-person affair, ignoring his rivals for the Republican nomination and going straight at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton over the war in Iraq.

In one broad swipe yesterday he managed to shove her and two other liberal institutions -- MoveOn.org and the New York Times -- into the same pinata and then take a good whack at them for their treatment of Gen. David H. Petraeus this week.

While apparently taking on the paper for offering a cheap ad rate to MoveOn.org, he slams Clinton at least four times.

Giuliani has made frequent use of the tactic of isolating the race between himself and the Democrats -- and Clinton in particular. And for obvious reasons, judging by the National Journal's latest political insiders poll.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

All those Republicans who say they are begging for Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the Democrats' presidential nominee? Don't believe 'em.

National Journal asked its panel of Republican insiders and found more than half (52 percent) think Clinton would be the "strongest general election candidate" Democrats could put up. Trailing well behind, former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama were the choice of 18 percent each.

The Republicans find Mr. Edwards more formidable than the Democrats do. Only 11 percent of the Democratic insiders surveyed by National Journal thought he was the strongest choice for their party, while 21 percent chose Obama and 55 percent said Clinton is their best hope.

As for the Republican presidential field, 37 percent of both Democratic and Republican insiders said Rudolph W. Giuliani is the strongest candidate, with Mitt Romney a close second.

Insiders on both sides have been skeptical of Fred Thompson for months, and it shows in this poll. Just 14 percent of Democratic operatives surveyed, and 9 percent of the Republicans, thought he was the best candidate.

The poll included 76 Democratic insiders and 82 Republican insiders.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

The lesson for today is: Never get on the Club for Growth's bad side.

Presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee has been feuding all year with the Club for Growth, a tax-cuts and free-market group, over Huckabee's record during 10 years as governor of Arkansas.

Today, the Club fires its funniest shot yet -- a Web site devoted solely to blasting Huckabee's record on tax cuts and what they view as anti-economic growth stances.

The Huckabee-Club feud has spilled over into the presidential debates, the Iowa airwaves, Huckabee's own television appearances, local news coverage in Arkansas and the first of the Club's series of reports digging into candidates' economic records.

Huckabee deviates from the standard Republican message that the economy is booming and helping to raise everyone's boat, instead saying that he sees those who are being left behind. And he tells audiences he's lived it himself -- he delights in telling how he grew up so poor his family used Lava soap, and he says it wasn't until he was older that he realized taking a shower wasn't supposed to hurt.

But it doesn't appear to be hurting. Even as the fire from the economic right increases, so do Huckabee's polling numbers.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times