"We're hesitant to jump on board with heavy attacks" personally against President Obama, Nicholas Thompson, the vice president of polling firm the Tarrance Group, said on the call. "There's a lot of people who feel sorry for him."

a private National Committee conference call with all allies on Tuesday party surrogates should refrain from personal attacks against to president Barack Obama Because of such a strategy is too hazardous. 

Recent polling data indicates that while the president suffers from significantly low job approval ratings, voters still give "high approval" to Obama personally, Thompson said.

Voters "don't think he's an evil man who's out to change the United States" for the worse--even though many of the same survey respondents agree that his policies have harmed the country, Thompson said. The upshot, Thompson stressed, is that Republicans should "exercise some caution" when talking about the president personally.

On the call--which Yahoo News was invited to attend because of a mistake by someone on the staff of the Republican National Committee--Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary for George W. Bush, encouraged Republicans to turn around Democratic attacks lobbed at the GOP presidential candidates (Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, for starters) for "flip-flopping."

"I don't like playing defense," Fleischer said. He suggested the listeners to Tuesday's call label the president as a flip-flopper on the following issues: opposing tax increases for those making under $250,000, opposing the Bush tax cuts, opposing raising the debt limit, and opposing a health care mandate.

"When it comes to flip flopping, Barack Obama is the king of flip flopping," Fleischer said. "You can offer that to anybody," he suggested.

Thompson noted that Obama may be boxed in by similarly strong personal approval numbers for Republican lawmakers as he ponders attacking the GOP House majority during the 2012 campaign.

"Obama running against Congress is not going to work," Thompson said.

In a poll conducted in early November by the Tarrance Group and the Democratic group Lake Research for Politico and George Washington University, voters gave their personal member of Congress a 46 percent approval rating--even higher than the 44 percent personal approval numbers for Obama in the survey, Thompson said. (The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.)

Fifty-eight percent of the voters surveyed disapproved of how Obama is handling relations with Congress, according to Tarrance's November poll.

"It's a tough road for him when you look at those numbers," Thompson said of the president.

Thompson said that his group's research suggests that voters are giving Obama higher approval on foreign policy than on the issue of jobs and the economy.

Voters aren't simply looking at the president as the symbol for a "broken Washington," Thompson said.

Update 3:40 p.m.: Republican National Committee communications director Sean Spicer followed up with Yahoo News to say the story "misses the point" and that Tuesday's call wasn't about ways to avoid attacking the president, it was about sharing the best strategies for attacks. "It makes more sense to focus on his failed policies than on personal attacks," Spicer told Yahoo News of their data regarding the president.

Ari Fleischer also emailed Yahoo News to share his complete list of Obama flip-flops, which, in addition to the points above, includes: promising to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term; vowing to lower unemployment below 8 percent following the stimulus; falling short on shovel-ready jobs; contradicting himself on constitutional rights-- condemning Bush but then supporting "warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detentions, secret renditions and kept [Guantanamo] open; giving lobbyists waivers to work at the White House after saying they wouldn't work there; and refusing public financing in 2008 after vowing to accept it.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria's army suspended days of punishing attacks on the restive city of Homs and began withdrawing its tanks Tuesday just as Arab League monitors visited the area and met with local leaders, activists and officials said.

The British-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said as the monitors visited Homs, at least 20,000 protesters gathered in some neighborhoods to "reveal the crimes committed by the regime."

About 60 Arab monitors — the first Syria's regime has allowed in during its nine-month crackdown on an anti-government uprising — arrived Monday night and began work Tuesday. The withdrawal from Homs was the first tangible sign that President Bashar Assad was implementing the terms of the Arab League plan to halt attacks that overwhelmingly target unarmed, peaceful protesters. The monitors are supposed to ensure the government complies with the deal .

After signing on to the plan early last week, Assad's regime only appeared to be intensifying the crackdown, rather than easing up, and it was condemned internationally for flouting the agreement. On Monday, security forces killed at least 42 people, most of them in Homs.

Opposition activist Mohammed Saleh said the heavy bombardment of Homs stopped in the morning and tanks were seen pulling out. Another Homs-based activist said he saw armored vehicles leaving early on a highway leading to the city of Palmyra to the east. He asked that his name not be made public for fear of retribution.

"Today is calm, unlike pervious days," Saleh said. "The shelling went on for days, but yesterday was terrible."

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some army vehicles pulled out of Homs while other relocated in government compounds "where (they) can deploy again within five minutes."

A local official in Homs told The Associated Press that the team of monitors met with Ghassan Abdul-Aal, the governor of Homs province. After the meeting, the monitors headed to the tense districts of Baba Amr and Inshaat, which have witnessed the most intense crackdowns since Friday.

Military forces had pounded Homs with artillery for days.

Given the intensified crackdown, the opposition sees Syria's agreement to the Arab League plan as a farce, and some even accuse the League of complicity in the killings. Since Syria signed on to the deal on Dec. 19, activists said nearly 300 civilians have been killed. About 150 more died in clashes between army defectors and troops — most of them defectors.

Syria's conflict is becoming increasingly militarized with military defectors mounting armed resistance.

The Arab League plan demands the government remove its security forces and heavy weapons from city streets, start talks with opposition leaders and allow human rights workers and journalists into the country. Before Tuesday's redeployment of at least some tanks, there had been no sign that Assad was implementing any of the terms, much less letting up on his brutal crackdown.

Opponents of Assad doubt the Arab League can budge the autocratic leader at the head of one of the Middle East's most repressive regimes. Syria's top opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun called Sunday for the League to bring the U.N. Security Council into the effort. The U.N. says more than 5,000 people have been killed since March in the political violence.

In Cairo, an official at the Arab League's operations room said the Sudanese head of the mission to Syria, Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, was leading the team of at least 12 observers to Homs. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

Homs, Syria's third largest city, has a population of 800,000 and is at the epicenter of the revolt against Assad. It is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of the capital, Damascus. Many Syrians refer to Homs as the "Capital of the Revolution."

many people protest in Syria and the local official said that before Tuesday  a bomb targeted a gas pipeline in the city.who spoke anonymity because he was not authorize to speak to the media