Time Magazine political analyst Mark Halperin reports that a deal is near that would see Republican presidential hopeful and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani drop his bid and endorse rival Sen. John McCain.

The endorsement, if true, would follow an expected disappointing third place finish in Florida by Giuliani, who had staked his entire campaign on winning the Sunshine State.

Halperin, without further describing his sources, said an announcement could come as early as Wednesday in California where Republicans are due to debate that evening.

Giuliani spokeswoman Maria Comella declined to comment on the report and said the former mayor was traveling to California in the morning.

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Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, who has staked his campaign on winning the Florida primary, is trailing in third place according to early returns from Florida’s Secretary of State.

Instead of battling for first place with John McCain and Mitt Romney, the former New York City mayor is trying to fend off Mike Huckabee for third place.

Giuliani has about 14.1 percent of the votes versus 13.8 percent for Huckabee.

Some very early returns are trickling in from Florida where Republicans are duking it out in hopes that a win in the Sunshine State will give one of them enough momentum to sweep Super Tuesday on Feb. 5 when more than 20 states vote. 
 
McCain - 31 percent
Romney - 29.8 percent 
Giuliani - 20.3 percent
Huckabee - 12.6 percent
Paul - 2.8 percent
Only about 20,000 votes in so far, more to come.

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A week ago, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee stopped inviting reporters to travel with him as he tried to drum up voter support around the country, in part because the cost of a half-empty plane was draining his coffers.
 
But Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, has refused to run his campaign into debt and instead has relied on lots of cable and local television appearances to spread his message. He narrowly came in second in South Carolina, behind John McCain, raising questions about whether he would survive to the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday.
 
But in the run-up to Feb. 5, when Republican candidates compete in nominating contests in 21 states, having reporters travel with you pretty much guarantees coverage. Otherwise, they have to catch up with you at rallies that don’t always make a candidate’s daily schedule.
 
Huckabee’s resumes flying with the media on Thursday in sunny Southern California, according to his spokeswoman Alice Stewart. “Please let me know if you will be flying our friendly skies,” she said in an e-mail to reporters.
 
Reporters hope Huckabee decides against flying to wintry Alaska (one of the Feb. 5 voting states).

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria (Huckabee boards plane at Miami airport Jan. 25)

Ahh how interesting it is when the campaign trail finds its way back to Washington. 
 
Bitter Democratic presidential rivals Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came very close to each other in the House of Representatives chamber tonight as they listened to President George W. Bush’s last State of the Union address. 
 
By all accounts, the two did not come face-to-face in public view in the chamber. 
 
Whether by chance or design, Obama was flanked by Senate colleagues supporting his presidential bid, including liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy who endorsed him only hours earlier.
 
Pictures snapped by Reuters photographers appeared to catch Bush and Obama exchanging a word or two after the president’s speech was over.

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Photo credits: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque, Larry Downing

LOS ANGELES - The latest poll shows New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Arizona Sen. John McCain winning by substantial margins in California’s presidential primary — but also that the races remain volatile a week before Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

The Los Angeles Times/CNN/Politico poll, which was released on Monday, finds the former first lady leading her chief Democratic rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, by a margin of 49 percent to 32 percent among likely voters — with ex-North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in third place with 11 percent.

On the Republican side, the poll showed McCain, a senator from Arizona, with a 39 percent to 26 percent edge over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney – a significant gain over the last Times poll.  Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani trailed at 13 percent, followed by ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 11 percent.

But the poll was conducted before Obama’s decisive victory in South Carolina on Saturday and endorsement by Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy on Monday, and the poll found that about a third of likely Democratic voters said they could change their minds before Election Day.

That margin was even higher for Republicans, among whom more than four in 10 voters said they might switch candidates in the next week.

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– Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria, John McCain signing autographs in Florida

KANSAS CITY, Mo.- A group of Democratic leaders in Missouri on Monday said they were forming a “truth squad” to protect Sen. Barack Obama from attacks they anticipate coming from rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Obama opponents ahead of the Feb. 5 Democratic primary here.  

The move is similar to one Obama backers made in South Carolina ahead of that state’s primary on Saturday, which Obama won handily.

Missouri state auditor Susan Montee and former Missouri Democratic Party Chair Joe Carmichael told reporters in a conference call that they and other state Democrats were issuing a challenge to the “false and negative campaigning” seen lately from the Clinton campaign.

The group said it wanted to counter in Missouri allegations that Obama does not truly support abortion rights, that he was supportive of a range of Republican policies dating from the Reagan era and former President Bill Clinton’s assertion that Obama had gotten away with a “fairy tale” about his opposition to the war in Iraq. They also said another one by groups apart from the Clinton campaign that Obama was falsely presenting himself as Christian would be challenged if it resurfaced.

“Our primary goal is to make sure it doesn’t happen here. The voters need to participate in this election based on the facts not based on negative attacks,” said Carmichael. “That’s why we’re out front early… to say ‘No’ to the Clintons. Don’t do it here, because we’re ready.”

Not to be outdone, the Clinton campaign on Monday announced its own effort to keep campaigning honest.

The “Rapid Responders,” is a “national group of truth tellers who will respond to inaccurate or misleading attacks” directed at Hillary Clinton and her husband. The Rapid Responders will operate in all of the 22 states that will hold caucuses or primaries on February 5th.

Wherever and whenever her opponents misrepresent Hillary’s positions in their states, the Rapid Responders will set the record straight, said Maricopa County (AZ) Supervisor Mary Rose Garrido Wilcox.

 A Jan 25. Rasmussen poll pegged Clinton with a 19 point lead over Barack Obama ahead of Missouri’s Feb. 5 primary contest. The telephone survey showed Clinton earning 43 percent of the vote to Obama’s 24 percent. 

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 - Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Clinton and Obama during a debate in South Carolina.)

The closest surviving relatives to President John. F. Kennedy are backing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Sen. Hillary Clinton brushed off the Kennedy endorsements, saying "at the end of the day this is not about anyone else other than the candidates."

What impact - if any - do you expect this endorsement will have on Obama's campaign?

MEMPHIS, Tennessee - Anticipation ran so high ahead of a stop here by Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, it seems that even the famed ducks who perform at The Peabody Memphis hotel were flustered.

Each morning at the hotel, seven trained ducks emerge from an elevator, walk across the lobby and dive into a marble fountain where they spend their day. Each evening, they make the reverse trip and ride the elevator to their quarters upstairs.

But the day before Clinton arrived late on Saturday at the hotel, where she held interviews with the press, the ducks went awry, hotel staff said. Two birds escaped upstairs, and one who fled into a banquet room was AWOL all day, a duck handler said.

The next morning, the ducks flubbed again, when one bird strayed from the parade to run around the lobby through the legs of onlookers before being scooped up by a handler. Onlookers gather in the historic lobby to watch the ducks parade, a hotel tradition.

The parade is so popular that even Clinton urged reporters to watch the spectacle rather than accompany her to church services.

Ducks running amok at the Peabody is unusual, said the handler, who noted these particular ducks were new to the Peabody. Every 90 days, the ducks return home to a local farm, and a new troupe takes their place.

But one hotel staffer mused that Clinton’s arrival sent the ducks atwitter.

“She must have ruffled some feathers,” he said.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Sukree Sukplang

Fresh from winning the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday also received the backing of Caroline Kennedy, who was a young child when her father, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963.
 
In an opinion piece for Sunday’s New York Times titled “A President Like My Father,” she wrote that Obama was running a “dignified and honest campaign” and was best suited, especially since he opposed the Iraq war from the start.
 
“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans,” she wrote.
 
In Florida, where voters on Tuesday decide who they want as presidential nominees, Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain got a big boost — the endorsement of the state’s governor, Charlie Crist.
 
That will likely be a big blow to rival and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has staked much of his campaign on winning the big southern state where many New Yorkers have winter homes. 
 
He has been counting on that to propel him to the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday but has lagged in polls behind McCain and rival Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor.
 
“I don’t think anybody would do better than the man who stands next to me, Sen. John McCain,” Crist said at a rally in  St. Petersburg with McCain. 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Lisa Hornak (Kennedy at the Profile in Courage awards ceremony in May 2007), Carlos Barria (Crist and McCain at a campaign rally.)