Forget the polls. You don't need to monitor the public opinion polls to track which Republican presidential candidate is surging. All you need to do is see which rival Texas Rep. Ron Paul is attacking - and how sarcastically he gets doing it. In the earlier debates, Paul went after Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Wednesday night, in Mesa, it was Rick Santorum's turn in Paul's sights.

The first question from CNN moderator John King was why Paul is calling Santorum a fake in his television commercials. With the bluntness that has gained him a cult-like following, the veteran congressman man responded, "Because he's a fake."

Under fire from Republicans for a promise he won't be keeping about cutting the deficit, President Obama might consider emulating Franklin D. Roosevelt, who found himself in a very similar bind eight decades ago. In October 1932, Roosevelt told a crowd in Pittsburgh that he would balance the budget and cut government spending by 25 percent in his first term. But when he got in office, the only way to combat the Depression was to increase spending.

It was the right course for governing. But it presented Roosevelt with a real political challenge when he was running for a second term and returning to Pennsylvania. He asked speechwriter Sam Rosenman how to handle questions about the broken promise.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich finished an astonishing comeback Saturday night to defeat front-runner Mitt Romney in South Carolina, plunging the Republican Party into a wrenching and potentially lengthy period of soul-searching: Can either of these jokers beat President Obama?

As Rick Perry ignominiously departs the presidential race and sheepishly returns to Texas, his oh-so-short campaign should serve as a humbling reminder to those who prognosticate about politics. For when Perry burst on the scene with an Aug. 13^th announcement in South Carolina that overshadowed the Iowa Straw Poll, no one foresaw that he would crash and burn only 159 days later, not even making it to the South Carolina primary.

The experts inside the Republican Party, political analysts and journalists were aware of potential pitfalls for Perry when he announced. But they were all more impressed by his executive experience in Austin, his ability to raise money, his influential backers and a jobs record he could highlight in an election that all expected would be dominated by the economy. Fueled by the high expectations and advance reviews, everything seemed to be falling into place. Only ten days after his announcement, Gallup reported "Perry Zooms to the Front of the Pack for 2012 GOP Nomination." He was beating second-place Mitt Romney by 12 points, 29 to 17 percent.

But the collapse was almost as quick and agonizingly inexorable. Accusing the head of the Federal Reserve of treason; calling Social Security "a Ponzi scheme"; aligning himself with the already-discredited birthers. And all that long before that "oops" moment or any of his other missteps in the many debates.

This morning's front-page headline in the State, one of South Carolina's leading papers, offers the bookend to National Journal's report on the movement toward Mitt Romney among business-oriented managerial Republicans. The headline reads: "S.C. Evangelicals Split, Frustrated."

Though evangelical Christians constituted a solid 60 percent majority of GOP primary voters in 2008, they "are divided among the faith-and-values trinity of the 2012 S.C. GOP primary, supporting Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum," writes reporter Adam Beam. Beam quotes Oran Smith, the executive director of the Palmetto Family Council, a leading local social conservative group: "I do sense frustration that there is not a single candidate that is being put up against Romney."

The Monmouth University survey released Tuesday - which showed Romney holding a double-digit advantage overall in South Carolina - quantifies the reason for Smith's frustration. It showed Romney attracting 29 percent among self-identified evangelicals - much better than his 11 percent with them in 2008, but not much more than the 27 percent John McCain won among them that year while amassing a narrow plurality win in the state. 

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- The only five men standing between Mitt Romney and the Republican presidential nomination took a walk Saturday night -- attacking each other and the media as the former Massachusetts governor coasted toward the brass ring.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is definitely an outsider now. He is on the flank of the debate platform, the last candidate called on and a fringe participant in the 14th GOP candidate debate. In fact, 45 minutes into the debate Perry had been called on precisely two times.

That Perry has fallen to a level of also-ran status pains his friends and makes a mockery of his troubled attempts to remain a credible presidential candidacy. Panelists leading the ABC News/Yahoo! News/WMUR debate didn't call on Perry until the 18th minute of the two-hour debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.

When Perry was riding high in the polls, he received questions early in debates and stood near the center of the stage, even with eight candidates on the stage. Now, with just six in the field, Perry was placed on the far right edge of the stage.

Perry's first engagement in the debate was on the question of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's spending votes and his ties to D.C. lobbying shops.

Perry said the nation needs an authentic "outsider" with no ties to spending earmarks in Washington, which both Santorum and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas support. Perry criticized Paul for seeking earmarks - specified spending projects written by Congress - and then later voting against the full spending bill. "In Texas, we call that hypocrisy," he said.

A second poll underscores the opportunity that division on the right is creating for Mitt Romney in Iowa. In the NBC/Marist College Iowa survey released Friday, Romney continues to draw only modest support overall - but remains positioned to capture the state because the groups most skeptical of him are fragmenting.

Overall, the poll showed Romney leading with 23 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 21 percent, and then Rick Santorum (15 percent), Rick Perry (14 percent) and Newt Gingrich (13) all bunched closely together. That largely tracks the findings of the CNN/Time/ORC Iowa survey released earlier this week.

In the NBC/Marist poll, like the CNN/Time survey, Romney continues to draw meager support among the party's most ardent elements. The new survey shows him capture just 13 percent among both evangelical Christians and voters who describe themselves as strong tea party supporters.

A bus tour is a great way to experience the under-appreciated glories of Iowa. (Seriously folks, the state is beautiful). It's also a valuable tool in a place that prizes personalized retail campaigning and hasn't seen all that much of it this year - especially from these two leading GOP presidential candidates.

Romney has been tending to his firewall in New Hampshire and trying to seem like he's not working too hard in Iowa lest he be embarrassed on caucus night. Gingrich has played the VIP celeb, counting mainly on debates to make him a contender.

That's changing this week in the final stretch. Romney gives a speech Tuesday night in Davenport and launches a three-day bus tour the next morning.  Gingrich and his wife Callista will be riding a bus for the duration. Their "Jobs and Prosperity" tour starts Tuesday with 11 stops in its first three days. 

That's small potatoes next to the 10 stops Michele Bachmann has scheduled for Tuesday alone. Bus tours have been a staple for Bachmann as well Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Ron Paul - the other candidates competing hard in Iowa. 

Polling in the unsettled race suggests Paul, Romney or Gingrich could win it. Bachmann and Santorum, short on money, are looking for a better-than-expected finish to keep them afloat. If Perry makes a surprise show of strength, he could re-emerge as the chief alternative to Romney.

Adam Smith of the Tampa Bay Times pointed out this week that some 370,000 Florida Republicans already have requested absentee ballots for that state's Jan. 31 primary -- more than all the Republicans who voted in the 2008 Iowa and New Hampshire contests combined.

Still, the snowball effect of doing well in Iowa and New Hampshire cannot be ignored. Thus the bus tours, the ads, the descending of the national media. 

The most accurate indicator of how candidates will fare Jan. 3 in Iowa is the Des Moines Register poll conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines. In the final days of 2007, it was the only poll to pick up on Barack Obama's growing lead over Hillary Clinton, due to his success at bringing new voters into the arcane caucus process.

The caucuses that year were also held Jan. 3 and the final poll was released Dec. 31 based on interviews conducted Dec. 27-30. Obama led Clinton 32 percent to 25 percent, a margin almost identical to his 8-percentage-point victory over Clinton and John Edwards a few days later.

The Register won't disclose when it is in the field this year. But judging by the 2007 time frame, interviewers will be talking to Iowa Republicans throughout this week of intensified candidate activity, advertising and press coverage.

Did Paul peak too soon? Did Romney and Gingrich wait too long to make a full-court press, or are they coming on strong just in time? The Register poll will be our best clue to what is likely to happen next week when Iowa Republicans cast the first votes of the primary season.

Said the 2008 Republican nominee John McCain on Sunday: "If I had, frankly, a criticism of the process, it is that I think maybe we're really getting a little too heavy on the debates.''

It's not an uncommon refrain. But so far, there have been roughly the same number of debates in this election cycle as there were in the last Republican primary.

McCain participated in 10 debates televised on major network or cable channels as of this time four years ago, missing only the PBS debate in Baltimore on September 2007, for a total of 11 debates in all. He subsequently appeared in six more before clinching the nomination.

This year, if you don't count the May 5 debate in South Carolina that didn't include several major candidates, Thursday's debate in Des Moines will be - you guessed it -- No. 11.  (No, I'm not counting Mike Huckabee's Saturday night special or Donald Trump's wanna-be reality show or the Newt Gingrich's Lincoln-Douglas-esque debates.) Another 11 debates are proposed between Thursday and March 19^th, but who knows how many of those will materialize.

The perception that the 2012 GOP primary has been overloaded with debates may stem from their impact more than their quantity. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich have all seen their poll numbers soar after strong performances, while Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry endured the opposite.

The best test of whether there are too many debates is the number of people watching them, and some have attracted twice as many viewers as they did four years ago. 

Texas Gov. Rick Perry took a major step this morning toward inoculating his campaign against the soft-on-illegal-immigration rap when he scooped up the endorsement of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Arizona lawman who has become the most recognizable symbol of transcendent voter frustration with runaway illegal immigration.

"The federal government has failed on border crime and border enforcement, and no candidate for president has done more to secure the border than Governor Rick Perry. I have been watching Governor Perry and Texas closely and know his border surge operations with state, local and federal law enforcement officials have helped shut down the illegal trafficking of weapons, drugs and people," Arpaio said in a statement today distributed by the Perry campaign.

Campaigning in New Hampshire this morning, Perry also used the occasion to pledge that as president, he will detain and deport apprehended illegal immigrants through expedited hearings, a tougher stance than he had before the issue became an ankle chain on his campaign.
 

It might be a blip, but the latest CNN/ORC national poll out this afternoon shows a new reason for more of Mitt Romney's hair to turn gray.

Overall, the survey showed Newt Gingrich edging past Romney to lead the field overall, with 24 percent compared to 20 percent for the former Massachusetts governor. That makes Gingrich the sixth GOP contender to lead a CNN/ORC poll this year - a level of volatility unmatched in any Republican presidential race since 1964.

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Gingrich actually didn't move much in the new poll, compared to the previous survey last week when he surged into a near-tie with Romney. Gingrich's support among the roughly half of the GOP that identifies with the tea party edged up only from 29 percent to 31 percent, a change within the poll's 6.5 percent margin of error among that subgroup. Among the half that doesn't identify with the tea party, Gingrich also remained virtually unchanged at 17 percent, compared to 16 percent last week.

The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll of California Republicans released yesterday shows that the basic divide in the GOP presidential race extends even to states not yet in the center of the action.

The survey, conducted from October 30 to November 9, found the race closely bunched among Republicans who identify with the tea party movement while Mitt Romney held a big lead among Republicans who do not. That follows the pattern evident in most national surveys about the race, as well as the recent CNN/Time Magazine/ORC polls in the big four contests that will kick off the competition next January: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. California isn't scheduled to vote until June 5 of next year.

"Sometimes, when I brought friends home after school, my mother would overhear them remark about the lack of food in the fridge or the less-than-perfect housekeeping, and she would pull me aside and let me know that she was a single mother going to school again and raising two kids, so that baking cookies wasn't exactly at the top of her priority list, and while she appreciated the fine education I was receiving at Punahou, she wasn't planning on putting up with any snotty attitudes from me or anyone else, was that understood?"

President Obama's approval ratings are subterranean, his policies are anathema to a sizeable segment of the electorate, and personality-wise, he is so brainy and tempermentally reserved - the much-analyzed "coolness" factor - that he finds it difficult to connect with voters in the feel-your-pain way that Bill Clinton did.

There would seem to be no limit to the slices of the president that a clever Republican opponent could sink his teeth into. But his "privileged" upbringing? As someone in Texas Gov. Rick Perry's inner circle should have told him yesterday, that dog won't hunt.

Instead, the presidential contender went on Fox News' Sean Hannity Show and mused that Obama "grew up in a privileged way ... He never had to really work for anything. He never had to through what Americans are going through."

Survey results in New Jersey released Wednesday show both President Obama's residual strength in a classic coastal suburban state at the core of the new Democratic electoral map -- and why Mitt Romney may offer Republicans a better chance than his rivals of denting that fortress.

The Quinnipiac University survey showed that although New Jersey voters split only evenly on Obama's job performance, he led all four of the top GOP presidential contenders by substantial margins. In a potential 2012 matchup, the poll showed Obama leading both Rick Perry and Herman Cain by 23 percentage points and Newt Gingrich by 19 points. Only Mitt Romney held Obama to a single-digit advantage, and he just barely: Obama led him 49 percent to 40 percent. 

Romney, though, was the lone GOP candidate to hold Obama under 50 percent in New Jersey, and he did so by leapfrogging the president among college-educated white voters while the other Republican competitors lost that category by gaping margins. In 2008, Obama narrowly topped John McCain among New Jersey's college-educated whites, 51 percent to 49 percent, according to exit polls.

If it's possible to encapsulate the volatility and uncertainty of the 2012 Republican presidential race in a single chart, the one below might fit the bill.

It tracks the results of the 13 national CNN/ORC polls this year measuring the preferences of Republican primary voters. It also separates the results into three categories: the overall leader, the leader among the roughly half of the party that identifies with the tea party, and the leader among the roughly other half that does not.

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The chart points to several large conclusions. First is how fluid and unsettled the race has been. Five different candidates (including three that did not run, Mike Huckabee, Rudolph Giuliani, and Donald Trump) have held the overall lead in the survey; not since 1964 have so many different candidates led in a GOP presidential race in the year before the voting.

Within the two evenly balanced wings of the party, there's even more fluctuation. In the 13 polls, six different candidates have led among tea party supporters: Huckabee, Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and most recently Newt Gingrich. Among those who don't identify with the tea party, a similar group of six candidates have held the top spot: Sarah Palin, Gingrich, Trump, Romney, Giuliani, and Perry.

The latest CNN/ORC national survey showing Newt Gingrich surging to a statistical tie with Mitt Romney captures not only the continuing volatility of the GOP's most conservative wing, but cracks in Romney's standing among the party's more managerial and moderate voters.

Most directly, the CNN/ORC poll underscored the persistent inability of the GOP's conservative vanguard to settle on an alternative to Romney. In the poll, Gingrich now leads among Republican voters who identify with the tea party movement, drawing 29 percent. That's an 18 percentage point increase over the 11 percent Gingrich attracted among those voters in CNN's mid-October poll. Gingrich's gain among the tea party contingent is matched almost exactly vote for vote by Herman Cain's loss: he plummeted from 39 percent among them in October to just 22 percent now. Cain's ascent with the tea party came after Texas Gov. Rick Perry suffered a similar collapse with those voters from September through October.

New polls released late last week in three behemoth swing states underscore a central opportunity Mitt Romney could provide Republicans in the general election-and the threat he could pose to President Obama.

In the Quinnipiac University surveys in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania released on November 10, Romney ran more strongly against President Obama than Rick Perry, Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich. One key reason: Romney performed much better than his rivals among college-educated white voters.

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Herman Cain sums up his world view in an all-too-simple phrase: "Peace through strength and clarity," he tells adoring audiences. "Clarify who our friends are and clarify who our enemies are."

Easy for Cain to say until faced at Saturday night's foreign policy debate with a question about Pakistan: Friend or enemy, Mr. Cain?

SPARTANBURG, S.C. _ Rick Perry hopes to salvage his GOP presidential campaign with a self-flagellation tour, topped Thursday night by this appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman."

But the betting in Spartanburg is that Perry is toast. Republican leaders say they don't see how he can recover from his agonizing memory lapse in Wednesday's debate, the latest stumble in a fumble-prone candidacy.

Another ugly jobs report. More lousy poll numbers. This must be a depressing day for President Obama and his reelection team.

Well, not if they're taking the long view.

It's anybody's guess why Rick Perry delivered such a comically awkward speech in New Hampshire last weekend. Here's two guesses: pain medication and booze.

The first guess came from GOP consultant Charlie Black, who was asked about the Internet sensation at National Journal's 2012 Election Preview on Tuesday.

"It's odd," Black said of the speech. "I haven't asked anybody in Governor Perry's campaign about it. Look, he's got a back problem, maybe it was back medicine... ."

Democratic consultant Steve McMahon, who joined Black on the panel, said "it appeared" that Perry may have been drinking. "Just odd," McMahon said, adding that he didn't know for certain whether Perry was drinking.

WATCH Highlights from Perry's speech:

An outside group of big donors who back Texas Gov. Rick Perry will start running advertisements in Iowa and South Carolina tomorrow, the first in a coming barrage of independent spending on behalf of specific presidential campaigns.

The group, Make Us Great Again, will spend a total of $382,000 on broadcast and cable spots in the two states, according to Jason Miller, a Washington-based Republican strategist who is helping run it.

The South Carolina ads were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

They will spend $57,000 in the Cedar Rapids market, $64,000 in Des Moines and $29,000 in Omaha, the media market that covers western Iowa. In South Carolina, the group is investing $59,000 in the Columbia market and $85,000 in Greenville-Spartanburg. Miller said the group would run a smaller number of spots in eight Iowa and two South Carolina cable markets.

Make Us Great Again is run by a former top aide to Perry, Texas lobbyist Mike Toomey, with help from Miller, who has long ties to the Palmetto State (Miller ran Gov. Mark Sanford's re-election bid in 2006).

The two ads are positive spots -- one for South Carolina and one for Iowa.

Perry's campaign is running its own ads in Iowa. He and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, are the only two candidates to have run television advertisements yet, but with just over nine weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, the onslaught of television advertising is likely to begin sooner rather than later.

The buy is the tip of what's going to be a very, very big iceberg. Make Us Great Again is a so-called super PAC, an independent group that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertisements. Supporters of several presidential candidates -- Perry, Mitt Romney, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Herman Cain among them -- have established super PACs on their behalves.

All that money is going to television advertisements. Romney's PAC alone had raised $12.2 million through the end of June. Other candidates' PACs haven't filed with the Federal Election Commission, but they are each expected to raise millions on their own. And, in this atmosphere, most political watchers expect those ads will be almost entirely negative.

"When Gov. Perry entered the presidential race, Iowa's renewable fuels community said it would keep an open mind and not hold past actions by the Governor in his state role against him,'' said Walt Wendland, president of the association. "But we also noted it would be important going forward to determine if Perry is running for President of the United States or President of Texas.  Unfortunately, that answer seems to be leaning heaving toward Texas.''

While the ethanol issue doesn't seem to have the same potency in presidential politics that it used to, Perry needs all the friends he can get in Iowa, where Mitt Romney and Herman Cain lead the polls.

One reason the Republican presidential contest has been so unusually volatile is that it's become two races running along parallel but very distinct tracks. One of those races seems to be settling down, steadily if slowly. The other still appears perched on an earthquake fault. If that dynamic persists,  former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will remain the favorite for the nomination- even though a significant proportion of the party remains resistant to choosing him.

The evolution of the GOP contest into two distinct races becomes apparent when looking at the long trend in public opinion polling. In the twelve national CNN/ORC surveys about the race conducted since January four different candidates have held or shared the national lead: ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and businessman Donald Trump (neither of whom actually entered the race), Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Other national polls this year have recorded leads for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and more recently businessman Herman Cain.

Michigan may be Mitt Romney's territory, but allegiances to the former Massachusetts governor are mixed. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., endorsed Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday. It is not the first time Miller has passed over Mitt--she endorsed Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 GOP presidential primary. Perry's decision to roll out Miller's endorsement this early is more of a symbolic gesture and a message to the Romney campaign that none of their traditional political territory is off limits.

In a statement, Miller said:

The David Brock-led research outfit American Bridge 21st Century is focusing their efforts against Rick Perry in the 2012 GOP presidential field, a further signal that Democrats are taking the Texas governor seriously in his bid to defeat President Obama.