Republican, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

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.

The more forcefully Herman Cain fights to save his presidential campaign, the more events spiral out of the candidate's control. After days in which he refused to discuss sexual harassment accusations against him, Cain reversed himself and starred in a nationally televised news conference at which he cast one of his accusers as "a troubled woman" and said he had "never acted inappropriately with anyone, period."

After repeatedly declaring this weekend that he was going to completely ignore the sexual allegations swirling around him, Herman Cain has reversed tactics once again, scheduling a news conference for Tuesday evening and promising to take the latest accusations “head on.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is trying to stay above the fray in the GOP nominating campaign. The former Massachusetts governor is visiting eastern Iowa counties he won in his 2008 bid for the state's leadoff caucuses. He's also sticking with his strategy of shadowing President Barack Obama and trying to present himself as the most electable Republican. Obama also visited eastern Iowa in the fall.

A poll shows that accusations of harassment against Herman Cain haven't cost him his spot with Mitt Romney at the top of the GOP field.

Leaving little to the imagination, a Chicago-area woman on Monday accused Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain of making a crude sexual advance more than a decade ago when she was seeking his help finding a job. "Come clean," Sharon Bialek challenged Cain at a news conference in New York at which she described herself as "a face and a voice" to support other accusers who have so far remained anonymous.

Herman Cain's rise as a presidential contender was supposed to prove that race didn't matter in the Republican Party. Cain is fast making it the only thing that does. The black conservative is trying to navigate around allegations that he sexually harassed at least three women, implying that the accusations surfaced because he is black. Hours after the claims were reported, Cain's supporters branded his trouble a "high-tech lynching." That's the term coined 20 years ago by another black conservative, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, after his confirmation hearings for the court were rocked by allegations of sexual harassment.

Ron Paul was declared the winner on Saturday of a weeklong Republican presidential straw poll in Democratic President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois.

The rancor that defined much of the last week on the Republican presidential campaign trail subsided a bit here on Saturday night, as Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain basked in each other’s company and the warm embrace of the Texas Tea Party for what was styled as an old-fashioned issues-focused debate.

Republicans in Iowa and other early voting states seem to be giving presidential candidate Herman Cain the benefit of the doubt for now.