I talked to John McLaughlin, the pollster for the Thompson campaign, about the state of the race.

On where his guy is: The reality of the race is that we’re third or fourth in Iowa, but we have more of an upside, because we have higher favorable ratings. You have Romney now behind Huckabee which is amazing — whoever spent his money is in big trouble. The toughest state for us is New Hampshire, where Romney is the favorite son and he’s spending [a ton of money].” (McLaughlin threw around numbers about how much the Romney and other campaigns were spending, but I haven’t verified them.) You have Giuliani, who is spending [an even bigger ton of money]. You have McCain, who’s already won the state and beat a guy who went on to become president by nearly 20 points. You have three formidable candidates, and that makes it tougher to get traction in that state. But we’ll do better than people expect.

And we’re leading South Carolina… This race is every bit as fluid or volatile as it’s ever been. Some of us will say Huckabee and Romney have peaked too soon. We’ve got what, 35 days to go in Iowa? 40 days to go? This is light years in politics….”

On how rapidly the standings can change: “People that attend caucuses, there are about 90,000 of them. These people pay attention. They’re sophisticated. They like political issues. If they’re willing to spend two, three hours at a place, they’re willing to pay attention and they’re definitely willing to change their mind. I saw [Steve] Forbes go from second to fourth in twelve days – I saw Lamar and Buchanan jump us in twelve days. Every day really counts, right to the end. This is the most volatile race we’ve ever seen.”

On campaigning during the holidays: “This is December madness. I wonder if caucusgoers will actually turn off ‘ It’s a Wonderful Life’ to watch Fox News. Everybody’s talking about it, but I think when people aren’t doing religious or family things, they will be paying attention. During this time period, in your communications, you have to be creative, be meaningful, have to be serious, not wasting people’s time.”

On the recent Giuliani vs. Romney fighting dominating the campaign narrative: Romney’s pivoting off of Giuliani because he knows that if he can create a one-on-one with Rudy, who’s to the left of everybody else, he can hold his conservative votes. When Romney goes after Giuliani, he knows what he’s doing; he’s setting up the contest he wants. You’ve got a contest between two RINOs. They don’t want to fight somebody who’s more conservative. They each think they can win that fight. They may both take hits where it doesn’t benefit either one.”