All eyes on Clinton going into Super Tuesday

WASHINGTON — The top presidential candidates and their big-name supporters campaigned from coast to coast Sunday, but one contender seemed atop everyone's mind: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney contrasted themselves, and each other, with Clinton as though she were the nominee. Her Democratic rival, Barack Obama, played along to a degree, saying Clinton is so polarizing that he is their party's better bet.

Rather than diverting the less-than-flattering attention, Clinton embraced it.

"I've been taking the incoming fire from Republicans for about 16 years now, and I'm still here, because I have been vetted, I have been tested," she said in a TV interview before campaigning in Missouri and Minneapolis.

"There's unlikely to be any new surprises," Clinton added, implying the same cannot be said of Obama, who has been in Congress three years.

Her confidence notwithstanding, polls showed Obama narrowing the lead that Clinton has enjoyed among Democrats nationwide, even as McCain appeared to be pulling away from Romney.

With 24 states holding presidential contests Tuesday, Sunday was an intense day of campaigning and advertising, making it all the more remarkable that one figure managed to dominate so much of the talk and speculation.

For years the New York senator and former first lady has been an object of fascination, mystery and sometimes scorn by Americans, few of whom seem neutral toward her. She is the Democrat conservatives most love to hate, and McCain and Romney campaigned against her Sunday as if in a proxy battle against one another.

"If we want a party that is indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton on an issue like illegal immigration," Romney said, "we're going to have John McCain as a nominee. That's the wrong way to go."

McCain, campaigning in Fairfield, Conn., said he has never sought special projects for his state, and added: "In her short time in the United States Senate, the senator from New York, Senator Clinton, got $500 million worth of pork barrel projects. My friends, that kind of thing is going to stop."

The Clinton fascination is trickier for Obama. He wants to capitalize on Republicans' opposition to her without agreeing that she is the inevitable nominee.

Speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation" before campaigning in Delaware, the Illinois senator said the problem is "not all of Senator Clinton's making, but I don't think there's any doubt that the Republicans consider her a polarizing figure."