McCain, Romney Square Off In Mich.

In Kalamazoo, Mich., today, supporters of John McCain kept coming back to one simple explanation for why his campaign is surging, CBS News correspondent Chip Reid reports.

"I just think he's an honest man," said Roger Andrews. "He's a man of integrity and I trust him."

Many here said they love his straight-shooting approach.

"Since I tell you things you want to hear, I gotta tell you some things, maybe, some of you don't want to hear," the candidate said at one event.

In a last-day bid for votes in the Republican stronghold of west Michigan, McCain talked again about Michigan's economy and how he would retool training programs to help people who have lost their jobs.

"I'm convinced that Michigan's best days are ahead of it," McCain told more than 1,000 people gathered at Kalamazoo Christian High School.

The town hall-style event, held the day before Michigan's primary, featured questions from audience members about the Iraq war, Social Security, health care and other topics.

"The best, most productive workers in the world reside in this state," McCain said. "We're not going to leave these people behind. That's what America is supposed to be all about."

The new CBS News poll shows McCain's electability soaring from 7 to 41 percent in just one month.

"It's going to be close," the Arizona senator told reporters on the bus from Kalamazoo to Holland. "Every indicator we have is it's a close race. We're doing everything we can to get our vote out."

Speaking in Holland at Hope College, a small liberal arts school affiliated with The Reformed Church in America, McCain again focused on national security and the military, making it a point to introduce veterans.

He said a top domestic priority is improving veterans' health care, and he criticized problems at military hospitals. He also railed against what he called pork-barrel spending projects.

He insists the transcendent issue in this campaign is still the war on terrorism.

And nothing gets his supporters more fired up than his promise to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq.

"We will never surrender and they will! It will never happen!" he said to a standing ovation.

With Michigan suffering the highest unemployment in the nation, McCain does call for retraining workers who've lost jobs.

Contrast that with Mitt Romney, who's based his entire campaign here on his plan to save the Michigan economy.

"The burdens on American manufacturing are largely imposed by government, and new leadership in Washington can lift the burdens and lift the industry," Romney said.

Romney, a successful businessman, says the focus should be on reviving the car makers who will then be able to create more jobs.

Alternately promising and pleading, Romney on Monday asked Michigan residents to vote for him in a primary election that could either rejuvenate or mortally wound his presidential campaign.

Before a cheering crowd of high schoolers and later the more somber members of the Detroit Economic Club, the Michigan-born Romney pledged to take better care of the state as president than rivals McCain and Mike Huckabee.

A hometown loss to either on Tuesday would be hard to overcome as the nominating contest moves to South Carolina and Florida, both locations where the former Massachusetts governor trails in the polls.

"The pessimists are wrong," Romney told the Economic Club, leveling a subtle jab at McCain, who has said that some lost auto industry jobs will never be recovered. "The auto industry and all its jobs do not have to be lost. And I am one man who will work to transform the industry and save those jobs."

Romney and his top advisers insist he will carry on regardless of Tuesday's outcome, noting that he won the Wyoming caucuses and has accumulated more votes than any of the GOP candidates in the early contests.

"We're going all the way through February 5. No ifs, ands or buts about it," he said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Speaking of the auto industry, he said, "I'm not open to a bailout, but I am open to a workout. Washington should not be a benefactor, but it can and must be a partner."

Romney called on the federal government to stop unfunded mandates like non-negotiated increases in fuel-economy standards, and instead sought greater investment in research and technology and work force training programs.

He also said he would convene an auto industry summit within his first 100 days, and warned that the ills affecting auto manufacturing could spread to the aerospace, pharmaceutical and other industries if unaddressed.

"I hear people from time to time say, `Well, that's Michigan's problem,' or they say something like, `Well, it's the car companies, they just brought it on themselves.' But that's where they're wrong. What Michigan is feeling will be felt by the entire nation, unless we win the economic battle here," he said.