After a day off to celebrate Christmas, the 2008 presidential candidates were headed back on the trail Wednesday, throwing their campaigns into overdrive with just eight days until the first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa and 13 days to the New Hampshire primary. 

Most candidates were returning to those two early voting states, with a majority parking in Iowa until the voting ends.

The notable exception to that plan is Rudy Giuliani, who's spending his time in Florida. Giuliani has taken a national approach to his campaign rather than focusing on the early primary states. With a recent slippage in the national polls, some are doubting his strategy of focusing on the Sunshine State and Feb. 5, when 19 states are holding Republican primaries.

"I think Rudy's decision not to go to Iowa may prove fatal," said Democratic strategist Liz Chadderdon. "I think (Mike) Huckabee's surge in Iowa is really costing Rudy. There are new national polls out. Rudy is falling and Huckabee is rising and I think it's all because of the Huckabee surge in Iowa.

"Iowa is first in the nation. It's tradition for candidates to win Iowa to build momentum into the rest of the primaries, and I think he's made a huge mistake.

"If we're walking into Feb. 5 and it looks like we've already got a winner, I don't think Feb. 5 is really going to matter all that much and I think Giuliani's gamble will not have paid off," Chadderdon said.

The question of whether Giuliani can lose the early states and still be competitive is one even Giuliani is talking about. He says he's not worried about the recent drop in the polls, and his strategy was always to start winning after losing.

"We are thinking ahead to Feb. 5 when you have Illinois, California, New York and all those places," he said, acknowledging that he doesn't expect to sweep all the states that day.

"We are not going to win all of them. We are ready for that. We're ready to lose a few and then rebound in others. ... These strategies turn out to be very, very bright if you win, or they turn out to be very wrong if you lose, and we will find out," he said.

Giuliani could stay alive until Florida votes. Also unknown is who will emerge from the early states as the socially conservative alternative to his moderate-to-liberal views and whether that candidate will have enough steam to roll past Giuliani.

In Iowa it's a toss-up between Huckabee and Mitt Romney, with the former Massachusetts governor and much of the GOP establishment warning that the former Arkansas governor is too moderate on illegal immigration, crime, taxes and spending.

In New Hampshire, it's a virtual tie between John McCain and Romney, who's pounding the Arizona senator for opposing the Bush tax cuts. Tax cuts are a potentially decisive issue in New Hampshire, which has no general sales tax or state income tax.

But for the near-term, McCain's still trying to shore up support in Iowa. The campaign embarked on a three-day tour of rallies and meet-and-greets through the Hawkeye State Wednesday.

South Carolina will be wide open depending on who wins the two lead-off contests. Huckabee is light on cash and organization in the first primary in the South. Fred Thompson has all but collapsed in the polls, McCain lost a brutal South Carolina primary in 2000 and Romney's Mormon faith turns off many Christian conservatives who make up one of the Palmetto State GOP's biggest voting blocs.

On the Democratic side, frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are hoping for a belated gift -- a win in Iowa to set them up for a happy primary season and the party's nomination.

Both Obama and Clinton on Wednesday kicked off a nine-day campaign streak through Iowa, with each battling to be seen as the candidate who symbolizes change and experience.

Though the match-up between Obama and Clinton has been pitched as the choice between change and experience, respectively, the candidates have tried to embrace both attributes in the early test states. In a press release Wednesday, Clinton's campaign cited the "war abroad and a troubled economy at home" as reasons to pick the New York senator, describing her as "tested, ready to lead." But the statement wedded that image with the description of a candidate who has "35 years of making change happen." 

Likewise, Obama's campaign swing is named the "Stand for Change" tour.

Edwards shifted focus toward New Hampshire Wednesday, returning for a day of door-knocking and town hall events in what his campaign said was his 23rd trip to the state. The former North Carolina senator launched a new ad in the state where he discusses how he will positively use the "enormous power" that comes with the presidency. And the campaign opened five new field offices there to accommodate the flood of volunteers the campaign hopes will flock to Edwards in the final days before the primary.

The candidate plans to return to Iowa Thursday for an eight-day tour across the state, focusing on his message of fighting for the middle class. Edwards has the strongest campaign organization there and is well-positioned for the final post-Christmas push. And he'll need it to surge from a statistically insignificant third place to a win.

To achieve that goal, the Christmas truce on negative campaigning is likely to weaken, if not collapse entirely. Outside groups already have started and the top-tier candidates may find it impossible not to follow suit.

Already, sniping has begun. On Sunday, Obama suggested that Clinton can't win because her national unfavorability ratings are so high -- 49 percent in the last FOX News-Opinion Dynamics poll.

"If you start off with high negatives, then you're playing on a very short field.  And it's hard for you then to persuade those who might be persuadable to come into your corner," he told CBS' "Face the Nation."

Meanwhile, pro-Edwards unions such as Service Employees International and the Carpenters' have been running radio ads touting Edwards' hostility to free trade deals. Edwards frequently rails against the corrupting influence of money in politics. Obama has called on him to stop the radio ads, which he says are financed by unlimited and undisclosed donations -- exactly the scenario Edwards opposes.

Elsewhere, the Clinton-backing American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union has launched a radio ad that knocks Obama's health care plan.

Obama's plan seeks to lower costs to broaden insurance coverage. He has argued that Clinton's plan lacks a mandate for coverage and won't cover all the uninsured.  But that is the same argument made about Obama's plan in the AFSCME ad.

"With all these plans there is one fundamental difference, either everyone is covered or some are left behind. CBS News reports Obama's plan, according to independent experts, leaves as many as 15 million uninsured," the ad says.

The ad also gives the phone number for Obama's Senate office in Washington, D.C., and tells people to call and complain about his plan for expanding health care coverage.

Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene said Clinton's plans for universal health care and other proposals will help the middle class. She warned against efforts to reject it.

"Ebenezer Scrooge would probably say, 'Well, just don't offer health care and have the free market fend for themselves.' Well, you can ask Tiny Tim how that worked out for him," Greene said.

But Tobin Smith, founder and chief investment strategist for ChangeWave Research and a FOX News business analyst, said any plan for universal coverage will be bad for the economy.

"There is no question that if you wanted to write a prescription to ruin -- take our growing economy and put it into recession, take 'Hillary care,' wrap it up with a little health care coverage and you have a recession," Smith said.

FOX News' Carl Cameron, Major Garrett and Malini Bawa contributed to this report.