Republican Presidential Candidates

What's Donald Trump up to with his offer to moderate an Iowa debate by Republican presidential candidates?

A pair of "super" political action committees supporting top Republican presidential candidates spent nearly $24 million in January, according reports filed Monday. A7

The opening-night audience - longtime fans of 1812's annual news-and-views send-up This Is the Week That Is - cheers to see Patsy (Jen Childs) back in South Philly, wearing her pink Eagles sweatshirt, giving Washington a piece of her mind. When she announces that 1812 Productions is the only company devoted to comedy in the whole country, she offers an aside, "I know, I know. Can yez stand it?" All the expectable, mockable suspects are rounded up for our amusement: the Republican presidential candidates, the Occupiers, Greece, superheroes, the Republican presidential candidates, President Obama, Michelle Obama, Wall Street bankers, spin doctors, the Republican presidential candidates, Harvard professors, newscasters, television talk shows, and, wait, did I mention Republican presidential candidates?

He couldn't get arrested. Your classic putdown for the man on the move going nowhere fast. Of course, the other day one of them did get arrested - taken away in handcuffs, in fact, for trying to crash the party - and it won't do him much good, either. We're talking losers. We're talking all those Republican presidential candidates bringing up the rear of the pack while getting their own rears kicked by voters across this thoroughly underwhelmed land of ours. It's not just Alan Keyes, who decided - until an Atlanta TV station and some Atlanta police decided otherwise - that he'd join a presidential debate that was limited to the top four contenders.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich stormed into this bastion of presidential politics yesterday, but brushed aside speculation he might run, suggesting he already is more important than his party's candidates and nearly as important as the President. The Georgia Republican happily welcomed the possibility of meeting President Clinton in a town-meeting setting tomorrow, when both men will be in the state. But he dismissed a suggestion that Republican presidential candidates might be invited.

Based on the NBC television network's promotion of it, the presidential debate tonight will rate somewhere between a great moment in political history and a sort of prime-time battle royal. "For the first time ever," the network has proclaimed in full-page newspaper advertisements, "all the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates contend for their party nominations on the same stage. " But in the view of many political professionals, the two-hour broadcast - the first sustained exposure on commercial television for most of the candidates - could turn out to be a blur, a montage of words and images too confounding for most viewers to sort out. The program is to include two political parties, four separate segments, 24 candidate-to-candidate questions and 12 individual politicians, each trying to make the most of the eight or nine minutes that will be his. The casual viewer is likely to have trouble separating the six Democrats from the six Republicans.

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidates stepped up their rhetoric against one another Sunday on the eve of an early GOP debate in New Hampshire, signaling the launch of a more robust interplay among the candidates as the campaign heads into summer. The strongest shot came from former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who took a swipe at the health-care plan signed into law by Mitt Romney when Romney was governor of Massachusetts. Pawlenty said the health-care law championed by President Obama amounted to "Obamneycare.

WASHINGTON - United on the economic issues that most worry voters, the Republican presidential candidates have turned to subjects such as vaccines, immigration, and the future of Social Security. And while there are some policy differences, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and others are raising those topics partly to make character arguments against GOP front-runner Rick Perry. Over the last week, Romney has said Perry's rhetoric on Social Security "scared seniors" and was "frightening.

WASHINGTON - With just over a year left in the race for the White House, campaign finance reports released Saturday offered the first detailed look at the haves and the have-nots among the Republican presidential candidates. Two of the top Republican contenders, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, brought in more than $14 million and $17 million respectively. Meanwhile, candidates including former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and businessman Herman Cain raised significantly less.

LOS ANGELES - As campaign stops for Republican presidential candidates go, the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in downtown Los Angeles seemed like a strange choice. There was reggae music booming from big speakers, lapel pins shaped like marijuana leaves, and a speech by California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the liberal former mayor of San Francisco who is famous for granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Yet there Gary Johnson stood last month, drawing cheers from a crowd of drug decriminalization activists.

Saying America is so mired in "moral depravity" that only a mass appeal to the Almighty can save it, Christian evangelical leaders from across the country are planning a giant prayer rally for Sept. 29 in Philadelphia. The "America for Jesus" daylong gathering on Independence Mall is expected to draw at least 30,000 people who "want to turn the nation around," said Bishop Anne Giminez, chairwoman of the event and pastor of Rock Pentecostal Church in Virginia Beach, Va. "We see the symptoms of decline all around us," she said Wednesday, citing murder and abortion rates and the decline of marriage.

Today is Super Tuesday, the day 10 states cast votes for the four remaining Republican presidential candidates, two of whom have no chance of winning. Newt Gingrich, better when trailing than as a front-runner, had his greatest success in debates where his intellect, wit, experience, and direct manner made him the most effective communicator of consequential ideas. With fewer debates ahead, a diminishing war chest, and an organization in such disarray that he failed to make the ballot in his home state of Virginia, the former House speaker's time has likely passed even if he wins Georgia.

A pair of "super" political action committees supporting top Republican presidential candidates spent nearly $24 million in January, according reports filed Monday. A7

What's Donald Trump up to with his offer to moderate an Iowa debate by Republican presidential candidates?

LOS ANGELES - As campaign stops for Republican presidential candidates go, the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in downtown Los Angeles seemed like a strange choice. There was reggae music booming from big speakers, lapel pins shaped like marijuana leaves, and a speech by California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the liberal former mayor of San Francisco who is famous for granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Yet there Gary Johnson stood last month, drawing cheers from a crowd of drug decriminalization activists.

The opening-night audience - longtime fans of 1812's annual news-and-views send-up This Is the Week That Is - cheers to see Patsy (Jen Childs) back in South Philly, wearing her pink Eagles sweatshirt, giving Washington a piece of her mind. When she announces that 1812 Productions is the only company devoted to comedy in the whole country, she offers an aside, "I know, I know. Can yez stand it?" All the expectable, mockable suspects are rounded up for our amusement: the Republican presidential candidates, the Occupiers, Greece, superheroes, the Republican presidential candidates, President Obama, Michelle Obama, Wall Street bankers, spin doctors, the Republican presidential candidates, Harvard professors, newscasters, television talk shows, and, wait, did I mention Republican presidential candidates?

AS I WATCH the Republican primaries, I've paid special attention to the rise of Herman Cain. Cain's story should be about hope and success. As an African-American Republican, he should be speaking about what the "party of Lincoln" can do, will do or has done for today's African-American. It wouldn't be easy, and I'm sure he's not naive. He has to be aware that speaking out about combating problems in the African-American community would cause him to sink like a stone in the primaries.

WASHINGTON - With just over a year left in the race for the White House, campaign finance reports released Saturday offered the first detailed look at the haves and the have-nots among the Republican presidential candidates. Two of the top Republican contenders, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, brought in more than $14 million and $17 million respectively. Meanwhile, candidates including former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and businessman Herman Cain raised significantly less.

WASHINGTON - United on the economic issues that most worry voters, the Republican presidential candidates have turned to subjects such as vaccines, immigration, and the future of Social Security. And while there are some policy differences, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and others are raising those topics partly to make character arguments against GOP front-runner Rick Perry. Over the last week, Romney has said Perry's rhetoric on Social Security "scared seniors" and was "frightening.

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. - When Terry Pfaff planted his feet and challenged the seven Republican presidential candidates on the debate stage last week, it evoked Norman Rockwell's famous Freedom of Speech painting, the one of the guy in a leather bomber jacket and blue plaid shirt speaking his mind at a New England town meeting. "I am not a libertarian Republican. I'm not a tea party Republican. I'm just a mainstream Republican," said Pfaff, picked to ask a question at Monday's CNN debate.