After a week of watching Rush Limbaugh under fire from both women and sponsors, conservatives are trying to change the subject. Or, at the least, make Democrats squirm and answer to the charge of hypocrisy. Their target is comedian Bill Maher, an outspoken liberal comedian who over the years has delighted in outrageous and controversial remarks about religion, politics and conservatives, particularly conservative women such as Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell.

American politics is generous with ironies. But here's one to savor. Our Wild West campaign finance system - deregulated by the conservative bloc on the U.S. Supreme Court and embraced by Republicans for both ideological and strategic reasons - may be dousing the party's hopes to win the White House.

Rick Santorum is quickly learning the ropes of being a serious contender for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. First you win a significant primary or four, then you attack front-runner Mitt Romney as insufficiently conservative and then you deny any knowledge of the organization raising millions of dollars in your behalf.

The former U.S. senator managed to accomplish all of that since his three-state sweep of Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado this week. On the trail in Oklahoma City today, Santorum decried Romney's "gotcha politics," and complained that Romney is not focusing on the issues - a nearly verbatim reprisal of Newt Gingrich's lament when he threatened the former Massachusetts governor's preeminence in South Carolina.

Mixing it up with reporters at his campaign event, Santorum was asked a question that by now has become a 2012 campaign standard:  "Senator, who is Foster Friess and how dependent are you on his donations?"

Not to rain on Rick Santorum's parade, but the man needs help from Wall Street or Big Gambling and he needs it quick. The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and perennial underdog managed to win not one but three states holding caucuses and a primary last night. But clear away the confetti and it's an unhappy fact for the would-be threat to front-runner Mitt Romney that he is just about broke.

Santorum's campaign had just $279,000 left in the bank at the beginning of the year, a paltry sum by presidential campaign standards and light years less than conservative rival Newt Gingrich ($2.1 million) or libertarian rival Ron Paul ($1.9 million). It was multiple light years less than Romney's $20 million. Even the hapless Jon Huntsman was able to put a few more pennies together. He raised nearly $6 million by December 2011, to Santorum's $2.2 million. 

President Obama's about-face on soliciting donations under a Supreme Court ruling he denounced is another reminder that we're living in times not unlike Teddy Roosevelt's -- and that Obama is no TR.

This isn't the first time Obama has defied TR's legacy.

Ever since April, people have been speculating that President Obama's campaign may shatter all fund-raising records and may even become the first-ever billion-dollar campaign.. But in the last month, campaign officials have struggled to knock down that notion -- sometimes very colorfully -- because they realize that the perception the president's campaign coffers are overflowing actually hurts fund-raising.

Campaign manager Jim Messina on Thursday tried again to rebut the billion-dollar notion, at least his third such attempt in the last month. This time, it was a video sent to supporters. After boasting of "a pretty good quarter" in which the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised $68 million, Messina praised the enthusiasm of the president's supporters, calling it "in stark contrast to what we've seen on the other side."

But, somewhat ominously, he complained of "a challenge that keeps coming up -- too many Obama supporters think we don't need their money. Or they don't need to give now."  He spoke of recent emails that said the campaign is going to raise $1 billion, so more contributions aren't needed. "Look," responded an exasperated Messina, "I totally get why people would think that. But they are completely wrong." He said the $1 billion speculation "is completely untrue."

Messina made the same point in an end-of-the-year email in which he wrote that such speculation "turns people off from politics." He added, "We do not and will not have a billion-dollar war chest." The campaign manager was even more colorful in a December video to supporters. "People have speculated this is a billion dollar campaign," he said. "That's bullshit."

President Obama's "fair shot" address Tuesday may be remembered as one of his best, a searing and historically poignant account of the greatest challenge of the American experiment: How do we give every citizen, rich or poor, a path to the good life?

But his speech in Osawatomie, Kan., with its echoes of Theodore Roosevelt's appearance in the same city a century ago, also exposed the limits of Obama's presidency and personality. Obama is a man of his times, and this is a lousy time to command what TR called the "bully pulpit."

Here's a crystal clear sign that the Republican presidential primary has come down to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, per Gallup.

Romney and Gingrich are the only two candidates that Republican primary voters believe would be acceptable presidential nominees.  Gingrich holds a narrow, but significant advantage over Romney on this front, with 61 percent viewing him as acceptable, with 54 percent viewing Romney acceptably.

The goal of Team Romney in the coming weeks: Spend big bucks to raise Gingrich's negatives, and hope he'll fade like the other candidates who enjoyed their time in the spotlight.  It's becoming clear that Romney isn't able to win the Republican nomination, but can prevail if all his rivals self-destruct and he's left as the last candidate standing.

OYSTER BAY, N.Y. -- In a display case at Sagamore Hill, the historic estate of President Theodore Roosevelt, a polished blue tablet reads, "By the turn of the century, business trusts controlled 65 percent of American wealth and Wall Street dictated the course of the American economy." A century-old editorial cartoon depicts the president firing a gun at a portly man with "The Trusts" scrawled upon the man's ample belly.

In a display case at Sagamore Hill, the historic estate of President Theodore Roosevelt, a polished blue tablet reads, "By the turn of the century, business trusts controlled 65 percent of American wealth and Wall Street dictated the course of the American economy." A century-old editorial cartoon depicts the president firing a gun at a portly man with "The Trusts" scrawled upon the man's ample belly.

My 14-year-old son soaked this in with a laugh during a Thanksgiving weekend visit to the national park. "TR rocked," Tyler said. "Can Obama be the next TR?"

That is a question I've been asking myself since 2008 when I did a series of stories with a colleague of mine at The Associated Press about the presidency and the role of that office in these times of immense change. One of the series' shorter pieces, written in March 2008, suggested that Obama and GOP candidate John McCain had the potential to be "TR 2.0."

"We're living in an era of brutal transition not unlike the turn of the last century, when Teddy Roosevelt and fellow Progressive reformers helped lead an anxious nation from the agriculture era to the industrial age," I wrote at the time.

The transition from an industrial economy to the information age and a global economy is creating problems that TR would recognize: A widening gap between the rich and poor, decreased social mobility and a loss of faith in social institutions, particularly politics. Into that breach stepped Obama, a transitional figure who promised a new breed of  leadership that was bigger than partisanship.

He helped lead the country out of a financial crisis, ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden and pushed through landmark health care reforms (with echoes of TR's agenda), but Obama's presidency is not nearly as transformational as Roosevelt's. At least not yet.

With voters as anxious and angry as they were at the dawn of the 20th century, it makes sense that Obama would travel to Osawatomie, Kansas, this week to draw a line from TR's presidency to his. On Aug. 31, 1910, Roosevelt delivered his New Nationalism address in Osawatomie, where he argued on behalf of a government powerful enough to regulate the economy and guarantee social justice.

"I stand for the square deal," Roosevelt said. "But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service."

Roosevelt called for a broad range of social and political reforms including a national health service, social insurance for the elderly, a minimum wage, an eight-hour workday, workers' compensation for work-related injuries, a federal income tax and the right for women to vote.

He railed against the influence of special interests on politics, calling for strict limits and disclosure of campaign donations and the registration of lobbyists.

Roosevelt lost the 1912 election after he bolted the GOP and created the so-called Bull Moose Party, running second to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. But many of the reforms he laid out in Kansas were adopted by Wilson and Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin Roosevelt.

TR thought and acted boldly. He was bigger than any party, a sturdy bridge to the new century. His policies were right for his troubled times.

The question today is whether Obama and his policies are right for these.

Today's headlines contain a rare piece of good political news for President Obama: According to the Washington Post's calculations, the president is outpacing all of his rivals in small (as in under $200) donations. More significantly, he's even outpacing his own magical year of 2008.

That represents an important vote of confidence from the grassroots, and is particularly important given the Democrats' notable lack of success in matching outside-interest-group fundraising combine that Republicans have put together in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

The president's ability to maintain the loyalty of $56 million worth of people is impressive in a year when polls have indicated that he and his party are on the wrong side of an enthusiasm gap.

One other politically significant piece of news for the president today: A New York Times report on new Census data that finds an eye-popping one in three Americans struggling to stay out of poverty. 

That could cut one of two ways for the president: On the one hand, it's represents a big pool of discontented voters -- not good news for an incumbent. On the other, it's a large and potentially receptive audience for the populist message that already has delivered some successes for Democrats this year.

The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision has stirred favorable rumblings about a campaign finance proposal once favored only by GOP lawmakers: Unlimited donations and full transparency.

Even some Democrats are starting to wonder if such a move is better than the current system, despite credible fears that lifting the donation limits would favor corporate leaders and their political cousins in the GOP.