Gop Candidates

Newt Gingrich's floundering presidential campaign is laying off several staffers, cutting back his travel schedule and planning for an all-out brawl at the Republican convention in August. "We're going to be refocusing, redesigning the campaign based on what we need to do going forward, preparing for what we're calling a big-choice campaign in August," spokesman Joe DeSantis said in an interview Tuesday night. Among the changes, first reported by Politico: laying off one-third of the staff and reducing Gingrich's schedule.

The Republican candidates for president used Monday's Supreme Court hearing about President Obama's healthcare law to promote themselves as the best choices to take him on in the fall. Rick Santorum, who appeared on the steps of the court, later said that rival Mitt Romney's absence highlighted that he was unqualified to take on Obama on the issue. “Mitt Romney cannot run this race on Obamacare,” Santorum said on CNN's “The Situation Room,” reiterating statements he made over the weekend that Romney was the worst Republican to run against Obama on the matter because of the Massachusetts healthcare law, approved while Romney was governor, that served as a model for the federal law. “The whole world is watching what's going on here in Washington, these Supreme Court arguments; Mitt Romney's 3,000 miles away,” he said.

The numbers are in -- and Mitt Romney won, but not by a landslide. When it came to fund-raising in February, the former Massachusetts governor stayed ahead of his GOP presidential rivals. Romney raised $11.5 million and spent $12.4 million, dramatically slowing down his burn rate from January, when his campaign spent three times more than it raised. Heading into March, he had $7.3 million in the bank. Rick Santorum got $8.9 million in contributions and spent $7.8 million, ending the month with $2.6 million on hand, along with $922,000 in debt.

Republicans in this red state will decide Saturday whether to hand Rick Santorum another presidential campaign victory and bolster his argument that he is the most viable conservative alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney, not Newt Gingrich.   The former Pennsylvania senator dropped into Topeka and Wichita on Friday, his second trip to Kansas since he won three states on Super Tuesday. "We need Kansas," he told about 250 supporters at a rally at the Great Overland Station, a historic 1927 railroad depot in Topeka.

President Obama accused his Republican opponents of "beating the drums of war" in an election-year effort to use the nuclear standoff with Iran for political advantage. In a news conference Tuesday, Obama pushed back hard against criticism lodged by GOP presidential hopefuls, warning against loose talk and "bluster" that can lead to deadly mistakes. "When I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I'm reminded of the costs involved in war," Obama told reporters in his first news conference of the year.

Mitt Romney started as the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination, and he's never really lost that spot. Still, he's had a rough six weeks. He's been attacked by his Republican rivals as both a heartless capitalist and a closet liberal. He's committed gaffes that make him sound like a caricature of a clueless rich guy. And the Democratic president he wants to replace has surged ahead of him (and all the other GOP challengers) in head-to-head polls. So is it time for Democrats to rejoice?

The leading Republican candidates for president aimed contrasting economic pitches Friday at voters in Michigan's tight primary contest — to differing and occasionally eyebrow-raising results. Mitt Romney highlighted his agenda Friday before the Detroit Economic Club, but ended up diverting attention with an offhand reference to his family's abundant collection of cars. It was another in a series of Romney remarks that have complicated his efforts to connect with voters who are suffering economically.

Republican presidential candidates recently have found themselves battling over who cares most for the poor. But their demonstrations of empathy sometimes collide with their plans to cut back the programs on which many of the poor depend. After he appeared to dismiss the very poor, Mitt Romney was forced to backpedal from his politically perilous remarks. But he and other candidates stand by bedrock conservative principles of cutting entitlement programs and government spending. "We have to be concerned about those who are at the very margins of society," Rick Santorum told the Detroit Economic Club last week.

President Obama is roundly criticized by Republicans for running up the nation's debt load, but tax and spending proposals from the GOP presidential contenders show debt would continue to rise under their watch -- sometimes to even more alarming levels. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have presented policies that would all push debt beyond current projections, largely because their proposed tax cuts would outweigh the benefits of slashing budgets on the spending side of the ledger.

President Obama is roundly criticized by Republicans for running up the nation's debt. But if a Republican takes the White House, the debt will keep climbing - and perhaps even faster than under Obama's proposed policies, a budget watchdog group said. GOP presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are touting policies that would push the debt beyond current projections - largely because their proposed tax cuts would outweigh spending cuts. Only Ron Paul's plans would begin to sharply decrease the debt, according to a report Thursday from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.