Incidentally, yesterday afternoon in Dewitt, Iowa, former President Clinton was asked, "of all the Republican candidates, who would you most get a kick out of seeing you wife run against?"

Clinton gave short, benign answers about Rudy and Fred, gave a more detailed take on Romney's campaign that generated guffaws from the crowd, did a brief riff on Huckabee and finished with some surprisingly strong praise for John McCain:

On Giuliani: "You know, I had a lot of dealings with Mayor Giuliani when I was president, and I think they'd certainly be an interesting pair."

On Thompson: "I have an interesting relationship with Fred Thompson. When he was Senator from Tennessee I used to send him cigars. That'd be an interesting match up."

On Romney: "I've gotten a kick out of his campaign, 'cause now that he's campaigning to all these social conservatives he's basically asking for forgiveness for most of what he did as governor. He basically says, 'well, if you were governor of Hades you'd act like the devil too. I did a good job of representing my constituents, but now that I have a chance to ascend to heaven I'll say whatever.' So that would be an interesting match up."

On Huckabee: "My former governor, Huckabee, is running real well in the Republican primary because he's a genuine social conservative and an economic populist. And he gives the best talk. He's really funny. You can probably tell we were all raised in an oral culture down there - most of us didn't have televisions 'til we were nine or ten years old so we had to learn how to tell a story."

On McCain: "I respect McCain. I totally disagree with him about the war and several other things. But he's a very honorable man who was mauled in 2000 in the most revolting way in South Carolina. And I respect the fact that when his people abused him worse than I ever saw a campaign staff abuse a candidate - just threw all this money away - he didn't quit, he just kept on running without it. So I like that."

Clinton finished by saying he didn't care and that the Republicans would have to pick their own candidate. "You know I'm interested in all of them." Clinton said. "I've reached the age where I'm not really mad at anybody any more, I just want to get something done."

A few moments later Clinton predicted that "if she [Hillary] wins the nomination, she'll win and win handily" in the general election.