Gop, Rick Perry | featured news

After a campaign effort that has defied convention and angered top Iowa Republicans, Mitt Romney is well-positioned to emerge as a big winner in Tuesday's presidential caucuses. The tightest GOP caucus contest in decades features Romney, Ron Paul and a fading Newt Gingrich in a virtual tie for the lead, making the final days of politicking unusually consequential. And another candidate, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum, could get hot at the end and knock one of the favorites out of the top three.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads GOP voters overall with 27%, but he is still having a hard time wooing conservatives, who are more enthusiastic about businessman Herman Cain. A collapse in support for Texas Gov. Rick Perry has left Mitt Romney as the clear front-runner in California's Republican presidential primary, but the former Massachusetts governor is still struggling to rally the party's most conservative voters, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll has found.

It was the Hoover Dam of mental blocks. Pundits referred to it as a “brain freeze” or a “gaffe.” In Internet parlance, it was an “epic FAIL.” But to neuroscientists, what happened to Texas Gov. Rick Perry Wednesday night looked like something very ordinary, exacerbated by stress: a “retrieval failure.”

Rick Perry gives his Top 10 excuses for a huge debate gaffe on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Perry says his campaign won't end despite debate blunder. "Oh, shoot, no," Perry told The Associated Press Thursday morning, a day after he stood on stage unable to remember the third federal department he would cut. He was asked if his campaign, struggling to regain traction, could survive. "This ain't a day for quitting nothing."

Perry, who struggled in his previous debate performances, was talking about the three departments that he would cut to curb the size of the federal government. He named two — Education and Commerce — but for an excruciating period searched his mind for the third, as competitors tried to help him out.

Mitt Romney's campaign is reportedly paying for automated calls in Iowa that hit GOP presidential rival Rick Perry on illegal immigration.

Sensing an opening, Romney is stepping up his Iowa campaign and talking about winning the state after months of taking a more low-key approach. He probably will return to Iowa in November and hold a conference call with thousands of Iowa GOP caucus-goers.

Rick Perry may skip some upcoming GOP presidential debates, sidestepping a campaign staple that hasn't been kind to the Texas governor in his first two months on the national stage. It's a decision that ultimately could cause other Republicans to bow out of the more than half-dozen face-offs scheduled between now and the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3....

This just in: Rick Perry says he thinks President Obama is an American citizen. Perry told a pair of Florida interviewers today that he has no doubt Obama was born in Hawaii and that he was only kidding around when he raised the so-called birther issue this week.