It's bound to get voters griping about his commitment again, but Fred Thompson's campaign schedule for New Year's Day is decidedly light, and it's all about football.

Thompson will not start campaigning until after the end of the Outback Bowl, which pits his home state Tennessee Volunteers against the Wisconsin Badgers.

Most of the other candidates have planned a normal day of campaigning, with just two days left before the Iowa caucuses.

But Mitt Romney plans to combine campaigning and football. His New Year's Day will be spent hopping from house to house, joining supporters who are watching the bowl games.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Mike Huckabee has started to cite the 16 executions he oversaw as Arkansas governor in his presidential campaign, pointing to them as a type of experience no other candidate in the Republican race can claim.

It's a grisly claim to make, but Huckabee is trying to counter Mitt Romney's attacks that he is soft on crime.

"The 16 people I carried out execution on in Arkansas would hardly say I'm soft on crime," Huckabee told supporters while campaigning in Indianola, Iowa, over the weekend.

Last week he made a similar statement to voters in Pella, telling them, "Ask the 16 people on which I carried out executions."

This week he cut an ad attacking Romney for, among other things, failing to ever carry out any executions as governor of Massachusetts.

Support for or opposition to the death penalty has a long history in political campaigns, but to claim carrying out an execution is a political benefit may be a new one. Either way, it's a stark claim to make.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

The Club for Growth, taking a break from bashing Mike Huckabee, has posted this video of Sen. John McCain apparently flip-flopping on yet another position — this time on the estate tax.

The video has two parts. In the first, at a campaign stop earlier this year, McCain calls for a $10 million exemption with a 15 percent tax on estates larger than that. In the second, during an appearance on CNBC on Tuesday, McCain agrees with actress Whoopi Goldberg that the estate tax should be repealed entirely.

That's curious because on Tuesday evening — possibly as McCain was speaking on CNBC — I was talking with his policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, who told me that McCain still wants the $10 million/15 percent solution.

With the rest of the Republican field calling for a total repeal of the estate tax — they argue it's a matter of fairness and double-taxation — McCain is under pressure to come into line with them, and maybe that's what prompted his glib new position.

But the back and forth is more than the Club for Growth can stand.

"Make up your mind, dude," said Club's communications director, Nachama Soloveichik.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Judging by the polling numbers, it may be a fight for the leftover voters, but Rep. Tom Tancredo is making a pitch to try to peel off Ron Paul supporters.

In a new press release he demands that his fellow congressman and presidential candidate disavow a supporter's open letter that criticizes the Minutemen who patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border and opposing assimilation for Hispanic immigrants.

The letter was written by Abelardo J. Arias, who says he's a Paul supporter. It was posted on the Web site of Lew Rockwell, a former chief of staff in Paul's congressional office whose current Web site is close to a shrine to Paul.

Even more interesting than the Tancredo-Paul fight is what the letter says about Ron Paul supporters. In short, it points up the promise and the problems of Paul's candidacy.

Paul's Freedom Campaign is possibly the biggest of political big tents, large enough to accommodate Democrats, Republicans, third-party members and the formerly apolitical. It holds together marijuana-legalization advocates, pro-lifers and those who wish the tax code would disappear.

But by being so broad, the campaign allows those voters to impose on Paul their own beliefs for what he would do if elected.

In this case, for Arias the letter-writer, that means he's certain Paul would oppose requiring English and pushing for assimilation of immigrants. Do the Iowa farmers who support Paul because of his position on the war or on abolishing the current tax code also expect their candidate to oppose English requirements?

So far, Paul has won a following by identifying the problems. But do his supporters all agree on the same solutions?

Given the outspoken nature of the Paulites, I suspect they'll let us know.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Mike Huckabee's "Merry Christmas" ad isn't going over well with all Republicans, and it has nothing to do with mixing politics and religion.

"If Mike Huckabee would waste his contributors' hardeearned dollars just to wish everyone a Merry Christmas while our country has to tackle important issues, just imagine how he would waste the money earned by taxpayers if he ever got his hands on it," said one disgusted Republican.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

The results are in, and Bill Richardson's recipe for biscochitos, New Mexico's official state cookie, won Yankee Magazine's cookie primary. Nine judges evaluated the cookies, made by culinary students at Southern New Hampshire University from recipes submitted by the candidates.

Your blogger hasn't had a chance to make any of the cookies himself, but he predicted Richardson's cookies would win based on the recipe alone, and this line in particular:

1 pound lard (a must, no substitutes)

There's no way other recipes, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of shortening in her oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe, were going to compete with real lard.

Unsurprisingly, Ron Paul won the online polling, with 93 percent of the more than 9,800 votes, with Mrs. Paul's recipe for apricot-coconut balls.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

With his endorsement by Sen. Joe Lieberman, Sen. John McCain offers us more evidence he may be a better candidate for the Democratic presidential field than the Republican field.

Lieberman, who calls himself an "independent Democrat" and who lost the Democratic primary for his Senate seat last year but left the party to run for re-election, said he wasn't going to let party identity get in the way of a good candidate.

"The problems that confront us are too great, the threats we face too real, and the opportunities we have too exciting for us to play partisan politics with the presidency," he said.

Lieberman's endorsement would be huge if this were a general election. Remember, seven years ago he was his party's vice presidential nominee. Imagine Dick Cheney endorsing John Edwards.

But unfortunately, McCain is still running for the Republican nomination. And while Lieberman's support is nowhere near as poisonous as Cheney's endorsement would be for Edwards in a Democratic primary, it doesn't really gain McCain much, except for press attention.

And Lieberman, who broke with his party over Iraq, helps underscore that McCain is close to a one-issue guy: the Iraq war.

All that having been said, the endorsement could help with a very strategic concern. In New Hampshire, independents can pick which primary to vote in. So Lieberman's endorsement may help McCain keep some of them voting for him in the Republican primary, rather than jumping to take part in the Democratic showdown between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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

It was the candidates' fault after all.

The Des Moines Register, which staged yesterday's disastrously boring Republican debate and whose editor, Carolyn Washburn, moderated it alone, says the candidates are to blame.

In an editorial the Register complains that "many of the candidates' answers were only somewhat satisfying."

Hmmm. If only someone could do something about that. Maybe someone with a forum, like a debate, in which all of the candidates feel compelled to appear. And to have to answer questions from a hard-hitting moderator on national television. Oh, wait.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Iowans pride themselves on being discerning voters. They tell reporters so every time we come to the state and wonder why Iowa gets to have the first presidential nominating contest.

But along with that goes an obligation. And today, the Des Moines Register, the flagship of Iowa politics, failed in that obligation.

Given the honor of hosting the final debate before the first nominating contest — with the Republican field in disarray, no clear front-runner and plenty of issues roiling the debate — the Register managed to produce a 90-minute affair nearly devoid of news.

Heading into today's debate, the campaigns, the press and even voters had been expecting a tear-'em-up affair, with Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney trying to jockey their way back into the race here and Mike Huckabee forced to defend himself from all sides.

Instead, to appropriate a phrase, the candidates were willing, but the moderator was weak.

The only real fireworks occurred between Thompson and Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Register who moderated the debate. Thompson refused to take part in a show-of-hands question on global warming, demanding time to explain his thoughts. When she refused, he refused to answer.

Washburn repeatedly failed to follow up on the few interesting nuggets that popped up — including an attack by Tom Tancredo on Huckabee's flip-flops on immigration and John McCain's stand against ethanol subsidies — in corn country, no less.

Instead, she asked the candidates to make New Year's resolutions for another candidate, and most of them easily slipped out of it, instead making resolutions they all could live with, such as being nicer or campaigning on the issues.

She also asked whether they would rather be social or economic conservatives. Romney easily slid out of that one, saying he wants to be known as a plain conservative.

Maybe most egregious of all, in a state where the candidates themselves say they can't go to an event without being pestered about where they stand on immigration, the moderator announced at the beginning she wouldn't be asking about the issue because Iowans have already heard enough about it.

Never mind that Huckabee has adopted a new stance in the last week, that McCain is still not where many in his party want him to be, and that Rudy Giuliani has never been specific about how he would handle current non-criminal illegal aliens.

For voters who aren't paying attention, today's debate may have been interesting. But Iowa's whole claim to "first state" status is that its voters are paying attention. That means they would have been better served by intelligent questions that got beyond word games and press-release answers.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

A few endorsements this week from curious corners:

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project that helped bring attention to the disastrously simple-to-penetrate U.S.-Mexico border, endorsed Mike Huckabee -- a substantial endorsement for a man who was being assailed by top anti-illegal immigration activists just two weeks ago.

Gilchrist said Huckabee "actually wrote a plan that I can embrace" -- though the plan was actually "cribbed" from another leader in the anti-illegal immigration movement, Mark Krikorian -- and that was enough to win his support.

Fred Thompson won the support of Morton Blackwell, Republican National Committeeman from Virginia, who has battled in the trenches of the conservative movement for years.

"Senator Thompson has the most conservative instincts on the public policy issues that are important to America," Blackwell said.

And Mitt Romney may have won the most important endorsement of all, from National Review, which said since Thompson hasn't convinced voters he even wants to be president, Romney is the best option left -- and a decent choice at that:

"Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest. While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization -- none of the major candidates has -- he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction."

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who had freely told reporters during the Fall campaign season he was worried about a Mike Huckabee presidency, has now jumped to the former Arkansas governor's defense.

The particular occasion is arguing Huckabee is being held to an incorrect standard as a former Southern Baptist pastor, but there's no doubt many evangelical Christian voters will take it as a sign Perkins has implicitly endorsed Huckabee.

In fact, it's hard not to see that as the message when Perkins casts Huckabee's campaign as a test for the survival of open Christianity in politics:

"There is clearly a reverse religious standard being applied to Mike Huckabee, a standard that says there will be no defining religious beliefs. I would hope the other candidates, including the Democrats, would clearly and absolutely denounce this reverse religious test and keep the media from going further down this path. If not, I predict that bible-believing Christians will step over policy differences they have with Mike Huckabee to stand by and support a candidate who is being attacked because he believes, as they do, that their Christian faith should actually impact the way they live. If that happens, the recent meteoric rise of the Huckabee campaign in the polls could look minuscule compared to the tsunami of support that he will get from Christians who are tired of the elites who belittle their beliefs and attempt to rob them of every public reflection of their faith."

Perkins and other national religious leaders have been getting blasted by state-level leaders, particularly in Iowa, for not having endorsed a man who they see as one of their own. Given that, it's not surprising Perkins had to do something to bless Huckabee, at least partially.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

NumbersUSA, the group that can rightly claim to be one of the major forces that thwarted President Bush's immigration bill this year, has just posted a new look at all of the major Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and finds most of them lacking.

Roy Beck, the group's executive director, says nie of the 15 candidates oppose "most of the measures that experts agree would be necessary to actually stop the illegal flow."

There are 16 different measures, ranging from opposing driver's licenses for illegal aliens to committing to stopping future illegal entry. Only one Democrat scores one "excellent" rating in even one category — Chris Dodd, whose opposition to driver's licenses for illegal aliens helped put Hillary Rodham Clinton on the spot several weeks back.

On the Republican side, Fred Thompson, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter all scored overall "excellent" ratings for opposing amnesty, while John McCain and Rudy Giuliani were rated "bad."

Mr. Beck's e-mail went out to 1.6 million people who are on NumbersUSA's mailing list. Given Numbers' success over the last year, here's betting some of the campaigns have their supporters call and try to get off Mr. Beck's naughty list.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

Talk about getting your project off the ground.

Ron Paul supporters have announced the flight plan for their blimp, and you locals reading this in D.C. are in luck. It should be in town (over town?) about 4-5 p.m. Wednesday, weather permitting.

After cruising above the District, the blimp is scheduled to proceed to New York and then farther north.

Paul supporters have declared that another major fund-raising push will happen on Dec. 16 — they've nicknamed it the Tea Party — and the blimp will be in place to dump tea into Boston Harbor.

But the blimp is good for more than just boosting their candidate. Supporters say it can suck the oxygen out of some of Paul's opponents in New Hampshire.

To that end, there's this subtle warning on the blimp's home page: "The blimp is very social. It wants to get its picture taken with every candidate in the race, and will be attending a lot of their functions."

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

The Libertarian Party is urging Ron Paul to consider running as their presidential nominee should his Republican bid fail.

The party's national committee unanimously passed a resolution Sunday calling on Paul to seek the nomination in when the Libertarian convention takes place in Denver on Memorial Day weekend.

Currently a Republican congressman from Texas, Paul was the Libertarian candidate for president in 1988. He said in a debate late last month he won't run as an independent.

"I have no intention of running as an independent," he said. However, the wording of his statement has prompted speculation that Paul could still run as part of an official third party and still make good on his word.

"Libertarian Party and Congressman Ron Paul share many common principles for liberty and prosperity in America," the Libertarians' resolution said, adding that the party's members continue to have respect for their former standard bearer.

Bob Barr, who was a Republican congressman from Georgia but has since criticized the party for what he says is an abandonment of its principles, proposed the resolution.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

The Economist says Republicans should stop fretting about their choices in this year's election and realize they already have a "political star in their ranks" — Sen. John McCain.

While dismissing the rest of the field as either unreliable, inexperienced or lacking judgment, the magazine says McCain has stuck to his guns. The problem is that those guns have usually been turned on his own party — something the magazine acknowledges, but defends as "driven by his (usually justified) conviction that they were betraying Republican principles."

The magazine goes on to say: "He has also been right about some big issues. He was the first senior Republican to criticise George Bush for invading Iraq with too few troops, and the first to call for Donald Rumsfeld's sacking. He is one of the few Republicans to propose sensible policies on immigration and global warming."

And there it becomes clear: what the Economist really wants is a Democrat to run for the Republican nomination.

This highlights the real problem for McCain: The issues he's staked out over the eight years since his 2000 presidential run — Iraq, global warming, corruption in government, torture, giving a path to citizenship to illegal aliens, campaign finance reform, clamping down on gun shows — are all better-suited for a Democratic candidate than a Republican. That campaign finance push still irks conservatives, and they are reminded of it every time they get another fundraising letter from the NRA, National Right to Life or dozens of other organizations that still chafe under the McCain-Feingold law.

Those voters say it's not so much the party that is rejecting McCain, but McCain who ran away from his party.

Remember, this is a man who flirted with rejecting his own party and running with Sen. John Kerry in 2004 and who some reports say considered bolting in 2001 as well.

Given all that, the Economist shouldn't be surprised most Republican voters are looking elsewhere.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

The Marijuana Policy Project wants top Republican presidential candidates to prove they know what they're talking about when it comes to medical marijuana.

The group, which fights criminal penalties for marijuana possession, says its supporters have asked Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain, and all of them have said marijuana is "too dangerous" for medical use or not necessary.

At a press conference today in front of Mr. Giuliani's New Hampshire campaign headquarters in Manchester, MPP offered $10,000 — the maximum contribution allowed from a political action committee — if any of the three candidates offered scientific evidence to back up their claims.

MPP promised that any campaign that responds will have its claims "evaluated by an independent panel of medical experts."

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

In some ways, it didn't matter much what Mitt Romney said today.

As long as he didn't goof up, today's major speech on religion was about regaining the ink as much as it was about clearing up questions about his faith.

For the record, he mentioned his own Mormon faith by name only once and spent only a few moments talking about the tenets of his faith.

By contrast, John F. Kennedy mentioned his Catholic faith at least 20 times in his famous 1960 campaign speech.

But for a man who has seen his lead in Iowa slip away, who has not made a move in the national polls and who has seen Mike Huckabee grab a giant slice of press attention, the speech gives Romney a chance to reset the public discussion and grab the headlines as would befit a front-runner.

His campaign treated it that way, sending out repeated advisories and teasers to reporters and even issuing photos of Romney preparing for his speech in the same way the White House will issue photos of the president preparing for a major address.

It also gives him a chance to play to one of his major strengths: He looks the part of a president, and today he showed he can occupy a podium and deliver a bully pulpit-style speech.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times

"I was going to go down and take care of this problem right after I got this gun."

— Republican presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo, in a telephone interview after the hostage situation at Hilary Rodham Clinton's campaign office ended. Tancredo was on his way to a scheduled stop at a gun store in New Hampshire, where he was picking up a handgun he had ordered.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times