Republican, Republican Presidential Candidate | featured news

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.

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....

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.

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.

The early Republican favorite is wearing Gap skinny jeans and going tieless on network TV. But despite his makeover, he still has a hard time connecting with voters.Defying his reputation as a 1950s square, the new, more casual Mitt Romney is popping up around the country as he readies a second run for president.

Aides say the former speaker of the House will become the first major Republican candidate to enter the 2012 race.

Potential Republican presidential candidates flocked to a gathering of conservatives on Thursday to road-test a message that basically boiled down to this: Beat President Barack Obama in 2012.

Just a few days ago, two potential Republican presidential candidates traveled to this Midwestern hub and in a span of 24 hours addressed some of the most powerful GOP conservative activists in the country.