Iowa Caucuses | featured news

All across Iowa next Tuesday, tens of thousands of Republican voters will travel through a chilly Midwestern night to the warmth of a local church or gymnasium for caucus meetings to select presidential candidates, the first voting in the 2012 election campaign.

Mitt Romney swatted at Ron Paul on Wednesday, a shift for the candidate who has largely ignored the Texas congressman and a possible sign at the shifting nature of the race in the state that in less than a week holds the first presidential voting contest in the nation.

Ron Paul’s built-in networks of loyal backers from his 2008 presidential run have given him a decisive organizational advantage this election season... It was four years ago that Ross Witt, a soft-spoken electrical engineer at John Deere, overcame his natural discomfort with knocking on hundreds of his neighbors’ doors during dinnertime as a precinct coordinator for Ron Paul’s campaign.

Seven GOP presidential candidates will meet for their final debate of the year, in their last chance to make an impression before the Iowa caucuses. ...

Donald Trump withdrew Tuesday as the moderator of a debate planned for later this month in Iowa, citing his interest in possibly still running for president as an independent. Trump pulled out of a debate he had planned to host along with the conservative magazine Newsmax, scheduled for Dec. 27, just days before the Iowa caucuses. All the GOP presidential candidates save for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum said they would not participate.

Mitt Romney may have some help in Iowa: Ron Paul. The Texas congressman's allies and others say that he drains support from the rising Newt Gingrich, and, if that turns out to be the case during the Jan. 3 caucuses and Paul manages to triumph here, the theory is that Romney would benefit in the long-run.

A "super PAC" associated with Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign launched a $3.1 million ad buy in Iowa on Thursday, starting with an ad attacking President Obama's job-creation record and touting Romney's.

The polls of the two earliest states in the presidential nominating contest both show significant progress for Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, who has moved up about 20 points in each state since October.

The real estate mogul will moderate a debate with conservative media outlet Newsmax a week before Iowa caucus.

Occupy Wall Street is trying to get protesters to descend on Iowa ahead of the Jan. 3 presidential caucuses. The Des Moines Register reports that the plan is to "occupy" the campaign headquarters of President Obama and the GOP candidates -- shutting them down if necessary -- in the week leading up to the leadoff caucuses.