Mitt Romney edged out Ron Paul for first place in a new poll of likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers, but it was Rick Santorum who made a huge jump, coming in third.

Romney earned 25 percent while Paul took 22 percent in the poll, which was conducted by ORC International for CNN and Time magazine, released Wednesday.

In an unexpected shake-up, Santorum jumped ahead of Newt Gingrich to third place, taking 16 percent. Gingrich came in fourth with 14 percent, followed by Rick Perry with 11 percent, Michele Bachmann with 9 percent and Jon Huntsman with 1 percent.

Santorum has trailed the GOP presidential front-runners for most of the year but earned several surprise nods from influential Iowa conservatives this month. His leap in the polls comes less than a week before the Jan. 3 caucuses...

The pro-abortion political group Emily’s List has released a new ranking of the Republican presidential candidates and it labels former Speaker Newt Gingrich as the worst of the GOP hopefuls seeking to defeat pro-abortion President Barack Obama.

Emily’s List is releasing a scorecard on all of the candidates and sees Gingrich as the worst if only because he has refined his pro-life position and recently moved to supporting a position that life begins at conception or fertilization as opposed to saying it begins at implantation.

Gingrich’s voting record on pro-life issues reflected the consensus pro-life views of the majority of Americans.

Gingrich voted in favor of a ban on partial-birth abortion.

NEWPORT, N.H. — Mitt Romney, back atop the GOP field in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll in Iowa, kicked off his “Earn It” bus tour here on Wednesday with another jab at Republican rival Newt Gingrich, who has been sharply criticizing the former Massachusetts governor’s “negative” campaigning.

“This is politics. If you can’t stand the heat in this little kitchen, wait until the Obama hell’s kitchen turns up the heat,” Mr. Romney said - first during an appearance on Fox News and then during a campaign stop in Keene.

Mr. Gingrich fired back, saying he can handle the heat and would be “happy” to “test this kitchen.”

“Go back and ask Gov. Romney, would he like to come and play in the kitchen? I don’t think so. I don’t think he wants to do anything except hide over here and pretend it’s not his fault that he is flooding the people of Iowa with falsehoods,” Mr.

With less than two weeks before the first votes are cast in Iowa, a new national poll is showing that Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney, the two top contenders for the GOP nomination are now locked in a tie at 30 percentage points each, among GOP and GOP-leaning independent voters, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News survey released Tuesday.

Ron Paul, the Libertarian Congressman, is in third with 15 percent. No other candidate received more than single digits...

Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann sparred on the issue of abortion in Thursday night’s Republican debate with Bachmann making an accusation that Gingrich did not fully support pro-life efforts in Congress.

“All right. Congresswoman Bachmann, you say that Speaker Gingrich has a, quote, “inconsistent record on life” and you singled out comments he made recently that life begins with the implantation of a fertilized egg, not at conception. What is your concern?” a Fox News panelist asked her.

Bachmann responded, “Well, my concern is the fact that the Republican Party can’t get the issue of life wrong. This is a basic part of our party. Just last night we gathered in Des Moines to talk about this issue, because it’s that crucial to our party. And one of the concerns that I had is that when Speaker Gingrich was Speaker of the House he had an opportunity to de-fund Planned Parenthood. And he chose not to take it.

Unfavorable views of Barack Obama inched to their highest level of his presidency in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, but he's still more popular than his front-running potential Republican challenger, Newt Gingrich.

And then there are views of the economy, which make both look almost good by comparison.

Forty-nine percent of Americans now express an unfavorable opinion of Obama, while 48 percent view him favorably - the first time his negative number has exceeded his positive one in this most basic measure of personal popularity. Obama's favorable rating has plummeted by 31 points from his career high, 79 percent, days before he took office.

Gingrich is further underwater, with an unfavorable rating that's essentially the same as Obama's - 48 percent - but a favorable score that's 13 points lower, 35 percent.

Six months ago, political junkies were deriding this year's Republican presidential race as one of the slowest and least exciting nomination battles in recent memory. Mitt Romney looked hard to beat. Newt Gingrich's campaign appeared all but dead. And several key Republicans whom many party insiders had begged to run—including Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee and Haley Barbour— opted out of the campaign.

Yet that boring Republican race has turned into one of the most unpredictable and chaotic presidential nominating contests in party history. With voting set to begin in a little over three weeks, the race now enters its most crucial phase. Republican voters in the early states will finally have to decide who they want to represent their party against President Obama.

The next 10 days will be the most critical of the campaign, as the candidates begin to make closing arguments to Iowans before most voters tune out the campaign during the Christmas holiday...

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- New Hampshire takes center stage for GOP 2012 rivals Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney campaign Monday as they battle it out to win the crucial state's vote that is just weeks away.

Romney, who is a former governor in neighboring Massachusetts, had been holding a commanding lead in the state, but Gingrich is edging in on him.

New Hampshire's key newspaper, The Union Leader, endorsed Gingrich over Romney a few weeks ago, which was a blow to the former governor, who was passed over for John McCain by the paper in 2008.

Monday morning Manchester's mayor Ted Gatsas will endorse Romney.

Sunday Gatsas said, "[Romney] has the skills and the executive experience that the next president will need to turn around our struggling economy" and that he's "impressed with the time and effort that [Gov.

Donald Trump’s stature within Republican ranks appears to be waning, after most of the party’s presidential hopefuls have shot down the billionaire developer’s invitation to take part in a “debate” moderated by “The Donald.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann, of Minnesota, became the latest to announce they will take a pass on the Dec. 27 Newsmax-sponsored debate, following in the footsteps of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, of Texas, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, meanwhile, have said they plan to attend the event.

The announcements from the Perry and Bachmann camps coincide with a Rasmussen Reports poll released this week that found voters aren’t overly enthralled with the idea of having Mr.

WASHINGTON – All but one of the Republican candidates in the party's chaotic race for the presidential nomination will speak in a forum in the U.S. capital Wednesday sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The speeches also will give the candidates an opportunity to respond to President Barack Obama's sweeping indictment Tuesday of economic inequality in the U.S. -- a theme that will shape his re-election campaign next year.

With some polls showing former Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, handily overcoming former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Wednesday's appearances present the candidates a ready-made audience to attack what many of them contend to be Obama's diminished support for Israel.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul is the only candidate of the seven not scheduled to attend.