Sparks Fly In New Hampshire

Barack Obama's, an Iowa winner seeking New Hampshire spoils, faced stepped-up criticism Friday from Democratic rivals now doubly determined to block his rise in the 2008 presidential race. Republican Mike Huckabee claimed momentum for a hurried five-day primary campaign.

"This feels good," Obama told cheering supporters after a dark-of-night flight from Iowa, where he trumped John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton in caucuses that provided the first test of the race.

Click here for complete Iowa results.

He said he had no plans to revise a winning campaign, but the same wasn't so for his rivals after an Iowa campaign almost entirely free of harsh criticism.

"The last thing Democrats need is to move quickly through this process ... without taking a hard look at all of this," Clinton said as she arrived in New Hampshire. She said of Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, "It's hard to know exactly where he stands, and people need to ask that."

The former first lady is counting on New Hampshire's famously contrarian electorate to give her a chance and to subject Obama to more thorough scrutiny in than he received in Iowa, reports CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds.

Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady, wound up third in Iowa, and second-place Edwards quickly sought to show her to the sidelines and portray the Democratic race as one between Obama and him.

"Senator Obama has a more philosophical approach, but we're going to give voters in Mew Hampshire a very clear choice between the two candidates who are change candidates," Edwards said on The Early Show.

"They want to have an election, and they want -- they like to shake things up," Edwards added. "I'll fight with everything I've got up here."

"For all the positivity of their victory speeches, Obama, Huckabee and other hopefuls should prepare for negative attacks during the truncated New Hampshire campaign," CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs said.

"If your campaign has suffered a decisive loss and a near must-win contest looming in a matter of days, how should you respond? The lesson plan from campaign 101 class freshman year says the answer is clear - go negative," Ververs said. "Barack Obama, John McCain and, to a lesser extent Mike Huckabee, should expect their opponents to increasingly seek to talk about the 'real differences' between them." (Read more from Ververs in Horserace.)

If the Democratic race appeared ready to turn in a more confrontational direction, the same thing was already under way among Republicans.

"It will be a different race here," vowed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, defeated by Huckabee's low-budget campaign in Iowa and now confronting a challenge from Arizona Sen. John McCain in the New Hampshire primary.

A compressed calendar gave Iowa's losers only five days to readjust.

Back-to-back debates on Saturday night guarantee the candidates free television exposure. But there is little time for them to replenish their treasuries, conduct fresh polling to guide strategic decisions or air new television commercials crafted to sway large numbers of voters - or to dissipate the momentum that Iowa often bestows on caucus winners.

Obama told supporters that if they follow Iowa's lead, "I truly believe that I will be the next president of the United States." As he well knew, New Hampshire frequently does not follow Iowa's lead.

Further complicating the race was the presence of a large bloc of independent voters in New Hampshire.

McCain benefited from their support in 2000 when he won the state's primary, and he is appealing to the same group to vote for him this year.

On the other hand, Obama profited handsomely in Iowa from the presence of thousands of independents who flocked to the Democratic caucuses, and he no sooner arrived in New Hampshire than he was mimicking McCain's appeal. "We need someone who exercises straight talk instead of spin," he said, a play on McCain's penchant for telling voters he'll give them "a little straight talk" even though they may disagree with what he tells them.

With little sleep, Huckabee flew out of Iowa, then pivoted to face a new audience in New Hampshire.

The former Arkansas governor pitched his plan for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and replacing the income tax with a sales tax, and said, "What we're seeing is that this campaign is not just about people who have religious fervor. It's about people who love America but want it to be better and believe that change is necessary, and it's not going to happen from within Washington."

Huckabee's hoping the results send a message to the GOP establishment, which hasn't exactly embraced his "man of the people" platform, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, his well-funded, methodical Iowa campaign a failure, dismissed Huckabee's victory as a phenomenon built on the support of evangelicals who make up a much smaller part of the electorate in New Hampshire. He said Huckabee ran as a Baptist minister, an option that "was not available to me."

While Huckabee was the Iowa winner among Republicans, McCain has gradually emerged as the strongest New Hampshire threat to Romney, who can ill afford a second consecutive defeat.

"There's no way that Senator McCain is going to be able to come to New Hampshire and say he's the candidate that represents change, will change Washington. He is Washington," Romney said as he arrived in the state.

"I think you're going to find America saying, 'you know what, we want to change Washington'," Romney said on CBS News' The Early Show. "And that's only going to be possible with somebody who comes from outside Washington. So, my message will be about change in Washington, getting the major problems we have solved rather than having Washington insiders just change the chairs around."

McCain was ready with a rebuttal, taking credit for a shift in President Bush's Iraq strategy that has been followed by a decline in violence and U.S. casualties. "I'm most proud of the change I brought about in Iraq that saved American lives," McCain said. "No one else was ready to make that kind of reform. I'm proud to stand here as a person who has reformed and reformed and reformed."

McCain, also appearing on The Early Show, said he didn't expect negative ads from Romney, already airing in New Hampshire, would prove effective.

Oh, I think it's a little bit desperate, and it didn't work in Iowa," McCain said. "I don't think it will work here in New Hampshire. People in New Hampshire don't like these negative attack ads. And we're ending in a positive tone."

Cordes reports that the upside for Huckabee in this battle is that he can stand back as Romney and McCain duke it out, stay positive and hope for a strong third here before heading to South Carolina where he leads in the polls

McCain and Fred Thompson finished in a near tie for third place in Iowa, then took different paths in New Hampshire.

Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, flew home to the Washington suburbs rather than New England. Aides said he would participate in Saturday night's debate, but planned to devote much of his time in the next several days to a swing through South Carolina.

Michigan holds its primary on Jan. 15, a week after New Hampshire. South Carolina Republicans vote on Jan. 19 and the state's Democrats on Jan. 26. (See all the primary and caucus dates)

However the nominating campaigns end up, some Republicans were already fretting over Iowa caucus returns that showed 239,000 Democrats turned out and only about 116,000 Republicans.

"November could be dark," said GOP strategist Scott Reed, voicing a concern that others in his party expressed privately.