MANCHESTER, N.H. ? Barack Obama, an Iowa winner seeking New Hampshire spoils, faced stepped-up criticism Friday from Democratic rivals now doubly determined to block his rise in the 2008 presidential race. Republican Mike Huckabee claimed momentum for a hurried five-day primary campaign.

“This feels good,” Obama told cheering supporters after a dark-of-night flight from Iowa, where he trumped John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton in caucuses with a pledge to bring change to Washington.

He said he had no plans to revise a winning strategy, but the same wasn’t so for his rivals after an Iowa campaign almost entirely free of harsh criticism.

“The last thing Democrats need is to move quickly through this process … without taking a hard look at all of this,” Clinton said as she arrived in New Hampshire. “It’s hard to know exactly where he stands, and people need to ask that,” she said of the first-term Illinois senator.

Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady, wound up third in Iowa, and second-place Edwards quickly sought to show her to the sidelines. “I think in many ways Senator Clinton represents status quo,” he said. For good measure, he added that Obama “has a more philosophical, more academic approach” toward change than he does.

If the Democratic race appeared ready to turn in a more confrontational direction, the same thing was already under way among Republicans.

“It will be a different race here,” vowed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, defeated by Huckabee’s low-budget campaign in Iowa and now confronting a challenge from Arizona Sen. John McCain in the New Hampshire primary.

A compressed calendar gave Iowa’s losers only five days to readjust.

Obama told supporters that if they follow Iowa’s lead, “I truly believe that I will be the next president of the United States.” As he well knew, New Hampshire frequently does not follow Iowa’s lead.

Further complicating the race was the presence of a large bloc of independent voters in New Hampshire.

McCain benefited from their support in 2000 when he won the state’s primary, and he is appealing to the same group to vote for him this year.

On the other hand, Obama profited handsomely in Iowa from the presence of thousands of independents who flocked to the Democratic caucuses, and he no sooner arrived in New Hampshire than he was mimicking McCain’s appeal. “We need someone who exercises straight talk instead of spin,” he said, a play on McCain’s penchant for telling voters he’ll give them “a little straight talk” even though they may disagree with what he tells them.

With little sleep, Huckabee flew out of Iowa, then pivoted to face a new audience in New Hampshire.

The former Arkansas governor pitched his plan for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and replacing the income tax with a sales tax, and said, “What we’re seeing is that this campaign is not just about people who have religious fervor. It’s about people who love America but want it to be better and believe that change is necessary, and it’s not going to happen from within Washington.”