The presidential contenders were making the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows this week. John Edwards popped up on Face the Nation, repeating his ridiculous threat to take away Congress’s health care if the body doesn’t pass universal health care coverage in the opening days of his presidency:

“I will take away--do--use my power, the power that I have available to take away the health care for members of my administration. And the basic idea is I don't think politicians in Washington should be protecting their health care when we have 47 million people in this country who don't have health care coverage.”

Fred Thompson talked with George Stephanopoulos on This Week on a wide range of topics, touching on hot button topics like Islamic terrorism and abortion:

“The judicious application of soft power is very important, as well as hard power. But we’re fooling ourselves if we think that if they just understood us better we’d all get along. . . .

“I think number one, that Roe vs. Wade should be overturned; we need to remember what the status was before Roe vs. Wade. It goes back to the states. States now, just about all of them or the heavy majority of them, have laws against abortion. They’re just restricted, they’re limited by what the Supreme Court has said about Roe vs. Wade.”

Huckabee was on Fox News Sunday to talk about his resurgent campaign, and showed off his new ad featuring Chuck Norris. Huckabee’s campaign, and the tactics he is employing, calls to mind another outsider candidate making an unexpected run at establishment candidates: Jesse Ventura. Off-beat ads intended to attract voters who might otherwise be uninterested? Check. A fractured electorate where support is split between several candidates and a plurality--not a majority--will get the job done? Check. All he needs to do to complete the checklist is pull off a surprise win in Iowa.

Meet the Press was the only candidate-less program this morning, but Chuck Todd was on hand to lay some awkwardly worded wisdom on viewers, noting “the quicker this is a two-person race, the, the better for Obama and the more stark--I mean, because when you go to this whole second choice thing--and I tell you, polling Iowa is a mess, trying to understand it. But when you go to the second choice, when you don't get that threshold and, you know, all this stuff, Obama does, right now, a lot better than she does because of this change argument, because he is more change than she is.” Got it?