CLINTON, Iowa--Listening to Mitt Romney on the stump, you would think the 2012 Republican presidential primary is already over.

During his talks to crowds at tiny diners and coffee shops on the second day of his Iowa bus tour, Romney made only oblique mention of his rivals for the Republican nomination. Instead, he cast the race as a choice between him and President Barack Obama, a man he insisted again and again is "changing America into something we don't recognize."

"I'm frightened that we have a president that doesn't understand America, that he doesn't understand what makes us unique," Romney warned Wednesday at a stop in Clinton. "He would transform America.

CORALVILLE, Iowa — Fighting back against the charge he’s too conservative to be the Republican presidential nominee, former Sen. Rick Santorum told Iowa voters Thursday he isn’t going to walk back any of his conservative stances just to get elected, and even embraced his reputation as a rabble-rouser in his dozen years in the Senate.

After an event in Coralville, Iowa, the surging presidential candidate said he was not afraid to “throw the bombs that are needing to be thrown, when bombs need to be thrown.”

Call it Santorum-entum: Mr. Santorum has seen his standing in the polls rise, with a CNN survey on Wednesday putting him in third place with 16 percent of the vote.

Newt Gingrich brushed off his slide in the polls Thursday, ascribing the shift to the negative ads against him and claiming his campaign still has the juice to attract a "tremendous response" in Iowa.

The former House speaker, in an interview with Fox News, vowed to stay positive despite falling off the wagon several times in recent days. He appealed to Iowans to make a statement against negative campaigning by supporting his "big solutions" candidacy next Tuesday.

"Anybody who has eight or nine million dollars of negative advertising, much of it false, thrown at them is going to slide for awhile," Gingrich said. "I'm frankly barnstorming Iowa making the case that they shouldn't vote for people that have been running the negative ads. This is a chance for Iowans to say to the country we are sick of consultant-driven negative politics. The stakes are too big."

Gingrich himself has strained to keep a strictly positive tone.

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...

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...

(CNSNews.com) - While President Barack Obama has focused his rhetoric in recent weeks on depicting a reckless Wall Street and insufficiently taxed "millionaires and billionaires" as threats to the American middle class, a newly released Gallup poll indicates that Americans apparently have been coming to a different conclusion during Obama's presidency, with fewer people now seeing big business as the "biggest threat" to the country in the future and more seeing big government as the "biggest threat."

Over the last forty-five years, Gallup has periodically asked this question: "In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future--big business, big labor, or big government?"

When Gallup asked the question in a survey conducted Dec.

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.

Pro-life voters looking for some good news heading into 2012 and the battle to defeat pro-abortion President Barack Obama got some good news today as new numbers from USA Today polls showed a shift in the right direction.

The new USA TODAY/Gallup Swing States Poll finds the number of voters who identify themselves as Democratic or Democratic-leaning in a dozen of the top battle ground states are getting out of Obama’s party. They percentage dropped 4 percent while the number of Republican voters in those states, who are looking for an Obama replacement, is up 5 percent.

The poll also shows Republican voters are more enthusiastic about voting in the 2012 presidential election than their Democratic counterparts.

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.