MANCHESTER, NH -- Good Thursday morning. Politics Nation spends all day on the Straight Talk Express, though we would love to be back in Washington to watch the Chicago Bears lose to the 'Skins tonight. Other than a big win, here's what Washington is watching today:

-- The Senate is still considering a fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax, while the House Administration Committee takes up the use of automated phone calls in federal campaigns. More states are banning the practice, which can be an inexpensive and effective way of getting a candidate's message to voters; calls usually run from between seven and ten cents per completed effort. President and Mrs. Bush light the national Christmas Tree tonight, while Secretary of State Rice attends a meeting of NATO ministers in Brussels.

-- It's game day for Mitt Romney, who today will address an audience in College Station, Texas about faith in America. Per excerpts provided by the campaign, Romney will address faith in general more than Mormonism specifically. "There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the constitution," Romney plans to say. "No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths." Check out Politics Nation's take on the speech later this morning, and Jon Meacham's take, in which he says Romney should call for a renewal of what Ben Franklin called the "public religion," a belief in a divine force to which all praise by doing good for other people. Romney begins his address at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, covered live on CNN.

-- In case any other campaigns, volunteers, employees, et cetera, were wondering, yes, you will be asked about Romney's speech. No, don't comment. If you do, you will get in trouble. Witness Cyndi Mosteller, co-chair of Fred Thompson's South Carolina campaign. "As a person who's been to seminary and studied somewhat the Mormon doctrine, I think that the more people scrutinize, look at and become aware of that doctrine, they will have more questions rather than less," she told The Palmetto Scoop. "I think the doctrines of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism are so vastly different from the Mormon doctrine." Candidates, that rule goes for you, as well: Mike Huckabee, for one, is irritated that his Baptist faith is getting more scrutiny than Romney's Mormonism. "He hasn't gotten nearly as much for his Mormonism as I have for being a Baptist. I mean, I've never heard the kind of interviews with him that I got from Bill O'Reilly or Wolf Blitzer. No one's just kept pressing and pressing and going into the details of his doctrine. Not that I've heard," Huckabee told GQ.

-- Good news for Romney: No matter how your speech goes today, you'll still have a lead in New Hampshire, where just 18% of Republican leaners call themselves evangelical, according to that AP/Pew poll out last week. John DiStaso points out that just nine percent of GOP voters in the Granite State are less inclined to back Romney because of his religion, a much lower percentage than elsewhere in the country. And whether or not the speech hurts him with evangelicals, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley still thinks Romney will get a narrow win in the January 3 caucuses, he told the Des Moines Register. By the way, now that Huckabee has overtaken him in polls, Romney can now win by just a few points and still call it a big win. If this is Grassley's prelude to an endorsement, it's awfully similar to 2004, when the state's senator (Tom Harkin) backs a former New England governor (Howard Dean) in the caucuses. We just can't envision Romney "screaming" to a crowd of fans.

-- Bottom line, according to Halperin and AP's David Espo: Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney were once their party's front-runners. They've run into trouble. Watch as they both switch tactics in order to, as Halperin puts it, "salvage" their candidacies.

-- Clinton gets some good news today, along with Huckabee, as the two win endorsements from the 16,000-member New Hampshire NEA. It is the first time the state group has backed a Republican, OnCall reports, and it's no wonder they chose Huckabee: He was the only GOP candidate to speak to their convention in July. The nod is big for Clinton as well; she's making a previously unplanned trip to New Hampshire today to accept the endorsement.

-- Huckabee's big rise has done more to inject new questions into the GOP race than virtually any other development this year: Do social conservatives actually matter? (Answer: Yes) Is Rudy Giuliani's status as a front-runner secure? (Answer: No) Will Mitt Romney win Iowa now that Huckabee's on the move? (Answer: A huge, resounding, echoing Maybe) And is Huckabee the Republican Democrats should most fear? (Answer: Read Cillizza's take) Are Huckmentum and Huckaboom words we can expect to enter the modern vernacular? (Answer: One can only hope) And how much is the media's attention boosting Huckabee's rise? (Answer: Check out the top three stories at the NYT's Politics section for a hint)

-- This could be interesting: Dan Bartlett, former communications specialist at the Bush White House, has been shooting his mouth off again, it appears, and conservative bloggers are frustrated. In an interview with Texas Monthly, Bartlett confesses that he sees the blogosphere as little more than a way to get his message out: "Talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support," Bartlett said of blogs. "It's a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we've cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on." Some bloggers, like Ed Morrissey, are less than pleased with the idea that they are little more than press release machines. The lefties are having fun too. Liberal blogger Kevin Drum gives right-wing bloggers a new motto: "Even more credulous and slavish than Fox News."

-- Smart Hire Of The Day: Television and movie writers are winning the public opinion battle in their fight for new, higher wages, so Hollywood studios are countering with their own muscle, in the form of a trio of top political advisors. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has picked up Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, two veterans of the Clinton White House and Al Gore's presidential bid, along with Steve Schmidt, who ran Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2006 campaign, Variety reports. Hey, has anyone asked Ah-nold how he feels about the strike?

-- Today On The Trail: John Edwards is in Seneca, South Carolina, his birthplace, before heading to Walhalla and Charleston. Chris Dodd is in Cedar Rapids and Pleasant Hill, Iowa. Hillary Clinton makes a trip to Gunstock Ski Resort in Gilford, New Hampshire, then heads to Manchester and back to Washington.

-- On the GOP side, John McCain heads to Timberland's headquarters, addresses the Portsmouth Rotary and has a press availability in Newington. Later in the day, McCain talks about energy and climate change in Portsmouth before holding a town hall in Raymond. Mike Huckabee meets the press outside a fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina, while Rudy Giuliani holds private events and a press conference in Sarasota and Venice, Florida. Mitt Romney delivers his speech in Texas today.