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Despite a new rival's surge, Mitt Romney is campaigning as though he's still the GOP presidential front-runner, focusing his criticisms on President Barack Obama, taking few risks and keeping most proposals vague enough to leave ample maneuvering room....

Perry leads Mitt Romney by 12 percentage points, 29%-17%, the poll showed. Texas Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, places third with 13%.

America’s presumably anti-tax party wants to raise your taxes. Come January, the Republicans plan to raise the taxes of anyone who earns $50,000 a year by $1,000, and anyone who makes $100,000 by $2,000. Their tax hike doesn’t apply to income from investments. It doesn’t apply to any wage income in excess of $106,800 a year. It’s the payroll tax that they want to raise — to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent of your paycheck, a level established for one year in December’s budget deal at Democrats’ insistence. Unlike the capital gains tax, or the low tax rates for the rich included in the Bush tax cuts, or the carried interest tax for hedge fund operators (which is just 15 percent), the payroll tax chiefly hits the middle class and the working poor.

The odds of getting re-elected have gotten better for Rep. Renee Ellmers and other Republican freshmen in the House — thanks to GOP calculations in redrawing congressional maps.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on Tuesday shot down speculation that she is close to deciding whether to jump into the 2012 presidential race, after talk that she would announce her plans during the Labor Day holiday weekend in early September.

Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman says he'd be open to running as vice president if rival and tea party favorite Michele Bachmann wins the nomination. The former ambassador to China and ex-Utah governor says that every time he's been asked to serve his country he's answered "yes." Huntsman tells CNN interviewer Piers Morgan that if asked by the Minnesota congresswoman to run as her vice president he'd "be the first person to sign up, absolutely."

The Wisconsin congressman released a statement to quiet the speculation that he would seek the Republican nomination.

News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes. Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?

Karl Rove said Sunday he thinks former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will get into the Republican presidential contest. Mr. Rove, the top political adviser in the George W. Bush administration, said Mrs. Palin’s appearances earlier this month in Iowa look “more like a candidate’s schedule than that of a celebrity.”

Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman is pounding away at rival Rick Perry's skepticism of man-made global warming and criticism of the nation's central banker, saying those stands hurt the Republican Party.