Republican Presidential Candidate, 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate | featured news

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich set to announce his candidacy via Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday.

It may have been the moment when former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson extended his riff about how his reality TV show would be different from Sarah Palin’s “crawling on her hands and knees up the ice flow in Alaska.” Or perhaps it was when Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) explained why not everyone would use heroin if it were legalized.

As Donald Trump boasted that he was "very proud" of prompting President Obama to release his long-form birth certificate, some Republicans on Sunday sharply criticized the flamboyant New York real estate magnate for pushing the "birther" issue. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Gov. Robert McDonnell and Sen. Marco Rubio are among those suggesting Trump's focus on the issue was hurting the GOP cause.

Eager but unofficial GOP contenders for the White House are focusing their criticism on President Barack Obama and taking a kid-gloves approach to one another....

Perhaps more than any movement in recent memory, the tea party has changed American politics over the last two years.

Representative Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008, said on Monday he will form an exploratory committee to consider pursuing the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Out with Sarah. In with The Donald. President Barack Obama has launched his re-election bid in a low-key manner, but the Republican Party's search for a challenger seems stranger by the day.

Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, is set to declare Monday afternoon that he is opening a presidential exploratory committee, a step that formalizes a campaign for the Republican nomination that he has been pondering for more than a year.

The Republican National Committee is considering sanctioning the GOP presidential primary debates and then selling the broadcast rights to news outlets, two Republicans with knowledge of the idea tell CNN.

Over the last few weeks, Washington conventional wisdom has begun to coalesce around the idea that Sarah Palin won't run for president. A number of news outlets and commentators have pointed out that she isn't doing the sorts of things that serious candidates usually do at this point in the calendar, hiring veteran staffers in the key early primary states, visiting those states regularly, and delivering speeches that begin to lay one's "vision" for the country. Roger Ailes of Fox News pointedly did not suspend her contract, as he did those of two other candidates, because, he said, she has given no sign that she is planning a campaign.