While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are wasting no time throwing jabs at each other, the other side of the aisle isn’t doing a bad job themselves of playing catch up. Suffice it to say that the gloves are off between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

Jim Geraghty at NRO’s Campaign Spot blog has a good round-up of the barbs that have been thrown recently between Rudy and Mitt, and points to a Byron York piece which gives some background on the rivalry while putting it all in perspective.

Personally, I find the muscle-flexing between the two yawn-worthy, but nevertheless realize that what’s happening is all part and parcel of a typical campaign season.

—- Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, feeling a bit of momentum swing his way after recent polls in Iowa show him gaining ground on Mitt Romney, is busy trying to paint himself as the “true conservative” of the race but in reality sounds more like a Democrat in a Republican’s clothing, with the exception of his views on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Robert Novak took several swipes at Huckabee in his column today, a column which pretty much lays out the case against the myth that Huckabee is a bonafide conservative. Make sure to read the whole thing.

—– Fred Thompson earned praise today from the Club for Growth, and economy guru Larry Kudlow, among others, on his tax cut plan, which Private Pigg at Liberty Pundit wrote about here. This could be the sign of a turnaround in the Thompson campaign, which has seen its popularity in the polls pretty much stall.

Oh, and FYI, this afternoon on my way home, I turned the radio on briefly to our local talk radio afternoon guy (Jeff Katz) just to see if he was worth listening to today and apparently he’d just gotten done with an interview with Fred Thompson or someone affiliated with the campaign, as he was asking people what they thought of Fred Thompson and mentioned that Thompson said in response to a question about illegal immigrants that we couldn’t just “put ‘em all on a bus and ship ‘em back to Mexico” (paraphrasing) to which Katz’s response was, as I expected, “why not?”

—- Guess what? John McCain is proud to be a “maverick.” In other news, rainy days tend to make the ground wet.

—- There’s a buzz in the air about a new Zogby poll showing La Clinton trailing the top Republican candidates in general election match-ups. Don’t get too excited about it, though. Most of the match-ups are within the margin of error. Not only that, but polls aren’t worth much unless they indicate trends, and this is the first one to my knowledge that is out there which shows Hillary losing to the top Republican candidates.

—- And finally, Don Surber has a “wouldn’t it be nice if …” post about the Republican candidates for president, a post I’m sure many of you will find a lot to agree with.