The former North Carolina senator’s campaign consultant, David “Mudcat” Saunders, working “rural” people in New Hampshire, is saying the Clintons “screwed” country folk with their support of NATFA and what he called a “Wal-Mart” approach to politics.

Saunders sugggested that rural Americans have been getting “screwed” on a number of fronts in a recent provocative interview with Iowa Independent’s Dien Judge.But in New Hampshire, according to a piece today by The Boston Globe’s Scott Lehigh, Mudcat is taking on the national Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, in more direct and pointed terms.

Here is Lehigh in The Boston Globe:

Campaign consultant David “Mudcat”‘ Saunders is in full angry mode.

The official name of this campaign swing is “economic fairness for the North Country,” but he and Cooter and the boys call it the ” ‘Let’s help John Edwards screw those who screwed us tour,’ ” Mudcat says. Us being rural America.

And who would that be?

“Who screwed us?” he asks, voice rising in incredulity. “The Clintons screwed us.” And, he adds, “Anybody that says different is delusional.”

The Clintons did it with NAFTA, and the Bubbas know it, Mudcat says. Why, it’s no wonder Hillary once sat on the board of Wal-Mart.

“The slogan of Wal-Mart is the same as what the Clintons’ policy has always been for rural America: ‘Always less,’ ” he says. (Actually, Wal-Mart’s former catchphrase was “Always low prices.”

In the Iowa Independent interview, Mudcat ripped Hillary Clinton for being on the cover of Fortune Magazine. Iowa Independent carried a separate story on Hillary’s appearance in that leading financial publication.

Corporate interests have long hedged their bets, but the former first lady who was demonized as something of baton-twirler for socialized medicine, is now assembling what Fortune assesses to be the broadest CEO support of any candidate in the presidential field. This is something Mudcat loves to reference out on the hustings.

The howitzer rhetoric from Mudcat follows Edwards own strong challenges to Clinton in last week’s Democratic Presidential debate. Edwards, again apologizing for voting to authorize military action in Iraq, said he had learned his lesson, but he strongly implied that Clinton had not and challenged her vote on a non-binding measure sponsored by U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, a move some senators, like Virginia’s Jim Webb, see as setting a pretext for another war.

A review of where the most presidential candidate appearances have taken place seems to confirm the notion that Iowa will be a key battleground for both Republicans and Democrats in 2008.  Iowa has had over 1,200 candidate appearances since January, more than double the number of the next-most-traveled state, New Hampshire.

Despite all of the attention, an overwhelming number of Iowans have not settled on a candidate to support.  Although many are leaning for one candidate or another, private campaign polls show that up to 80 percent of caucus-goers predict that they could change their minds about the race between now and January.  Polls have tended to show either a Clinton or an Edwards lead in recent weeks, but generally no leads are outside the margin for error.  And a Newsweek poll released today shows a narrow lead for Obama among likely caucus-goers, so it isn’t time to write any of the top three off.

Among the so-called “second tier,” Gov. Bill Richardson and Sens. Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, have all built momentum in Iowa of late.  Richardson has kept himself in double digits in Iowa polls, Biden has racked up an impressive number of state legislative endorsements, and Dodd has transferred more resources here, claiming to have almost 60 staffers on the ground.

The biggest surprise of the week came from Edwards, who announced that he would accept matching funds from the FEC for his campaign.  FEC rules will prevent him from spending as much money on media in Iowa as he might have otherwise, although campaign manager David Bonior told me he expected the state-by-state spending caps would not be an issue.  Still, Obama and Clinton are likely to spend significantly more than Edwards here.

On the Republican side, many presidential candidates were invited to a dinner hosted by the socially conservative Iowa Christian Alliance, known for carrying significant influence in the Republican caucuses, Saturday evening in Des Moines, although only one obliged.  Former Sen. Fred Thompson will be making his first appearance in front of the group.

But Rudy Giuliani wasn’t invited.  Steve Scheffler, organizer of the event and kingmaker among Republicans in the state, said “I think a lot of our base would rather wander in the wilderness for eight to 12 years than to vote for [Giuliani].”

Finally, the celebrities have also started coming to town.  “Sexy plumber” James Denton, star of the ABC series Desperate Housewives, is making a swing through Iowa for Edwards this weekend, and The Last King of Scotland’s Forest Whitaker will campaign on behalf of Obama next week.

Today’s New York Times has a revealing piece about the influence of ultra-individualist Ayn Rand, and in particular her book “Atlas Shrugged,” on CEOs and business leaders, including former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan.

Some Republicans may want to read the book to get pointers on what likely will have to be a future more faithful to its libertarian roots — the “Me and I” over Hillary’s “village,” if you will.

In its recent cheap chase for votes, the social conservative, in-your-face Sunday gasbag tactics of Karl Rove’s GOP have worked, as Iowa Independent has reported in great detail with, for example, the exploitation of the gay marriage issue in 2004.

It is no great revelation that some of the more accurate predictors of whether an American will vote Republican are church attendance and family status (married and with children), which in turn lead one to see what people think about gays.

A stunning new study from the Pew Research Center shows that adult Americans (those people who can vote, Mr. Rove) are starting to think more like individuals than parents. According to this study, just 41 percent of Americans now say that children are “very important” to a successful marriage, down sharply from the 65 percent who said that in a 1990 survey.

Here is one excerpt from the study:

Indeed, children have fallen to eighth out of nine on a list of items that people associate with successful marriages – well behind "sharing household chores," "good housing," "adequate income," "happy sexual relationship," and "faithfulness." Back in 1990, when the American public was given this same list on a World Values Survey, children ranked third in importance.

What’s at work here is something called “Generational Replacement,” with older, more conservative Americans, those born before 1960, eventually being replaced, day by day, death by death, by younger more tolerant folk who are less family friendly in the way the Republicans think of “family friendly.”

A great irony for the Republicans, which has largely sought to demonize the growing Hispanic community for short-term PR diversion from the failed policy in Iraq and divide-and-conquer politics in some regions of the nation (western Iowa included), is that Hispanic households would more naturally fit into the GOP’s social conservative thinking. Consider this: 69 percent of Hispanics view having children as vital to a happy marriage, compared with 35 percent of whites in the Pew survey.

What can the future GOP do to attact the single, the childless and the Hispanic community — all groups that it is alienating, for generations perhaps, with this family values business? We know George W. Bush isn’t much for reading and book-learning stuff but is someone in his party catching these numbers, spotting this trend?

As a native Iowan who has covered politics for nearly two decades (from school boards to presidential candidates) I would have to say that a key factor I’ve seen in the shaping of people’s politics is parenthood and the value placed on it. Author and Esquire magazine columnist Chuck Klosterman, a Generation X-er, got off the best line I’ve heard about covering school boards: “There’s nothing more annoying than a mother who actually cares about her kids.”

But you can’t be a “security mom” or a “soccer mom” if you don’t have those drooling, bed-wetting little creatures in your house.