Romney Ups Stakes for Volatile GOP Field

Huckabee is gaining traction, as evidenced by the endorsement Thursday night by Dan Philbrick, a leading Republican in northern New Hampshire who held a party for the former Arkansas governor that drew some of the top names in New Hampshire GOP circles.

As for Thompson, the newly minted candidate was greeted politely in Iowa on Friday, though the size of his crowds and the understated reception belied expectations of a celebrity's greeting.

Cullen said the Tennessee senator waited too long to enter the race. The best organizers are spoken for, he said.

The GOP chair noted that Thompson's first post-announcement stop in New Hampshire was scheduled for Saturday night at the home of Republican stalwart Doug Scamman _ a Giuliani supporter. Scamman, former speaker of the state House, is hosting an event for New Hampshire Republican women that Thompson will attend.

"Thompson can't even build a crowd," Cullen said.

"Maybe the times have changed, and the Webcast and his celebrity are enough. Maybe he and his tactics are the wave of the future," Cullen said, adding a stinging comparison between Thompson and the failed 1985 launch of a new Coca-Cola formula. "Or maybe he's the New Coke."

McCain, who won the 2000 New Hampshire primary only to lose the nomination to then-Texas Gov. George Bush, hopes to revive his campaign in New Hampshire. He turned in a strong debate performance _ at Romney's expense.

Shortly after Romney said the military buildup in Iraq is apparently working, McCain fired back: "The surge is working, sir, no, not apparently. It's working."

As he campaigned across northern New Hampshire on Friday, Romney told voters he expected Gen. David Petraeus to report this month that the surge is working.

He offered hope at every stop that U.S. troops will "slowly but surely" return home. He doesn't say how many troops will come back or when the reductions would start.

"It's probably not going to be 100,000 tomorrow, but it's a slow and steady reduction from playing the front-line role to playing more of a support role, which means logistical support ... ," he told The AP.

Romney's brief campaign speech focused on the economic and military challenges facing a nation undergoing a once-every-century type transition.

He is an able campaigner. What he lacks in charisma he tries to make up with an almost robotic discipline.

He can come off as a bit cold, as he did during the debate when he dispassionately apologized to a man offended by Romney's comparison of those serving in Iraq to his son's work on his presidential campaign.

In Conway, N.H., Romney claimed credit for reducing mercury levels in Massachusetts and struggled to remember the exact percentage of the drop.

"Was it 90 percent?" he said, scanning the crowd for aide Eric Fehrnstrom.

"I don't know the percentages, governor," the aide replied loud enough for the crowd to here, "but you reduced mercury emissions from the smokestack industries and also reduced mercury pollution in the environment."

Romney beamed. "Isn't this great? I've got a verifier over here. So we went after mercury ..."

As so happens, Romney enacted anti-mercury regulations initiated by his Republican predecessor.