Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum | featured news

Newt Gingrich hedged whether he could win his old home state on Super Tuesday as he campaigned through the vote-rich Atlanta area with Herman Cain at his side amid incursions from Mitt Romney and a surging Rick Santorum.

CNN has canceled plans for a GOP presidential debate on March 1, after Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum indicated they would skip the event. "Without full participation of all four candidates, CNN will not move forward with the Super Tuesday debate," CNN said in a statement.

A political group supporting Mitt Romney’s Republican presidential bid began airing television advertisements in Michigan today, charging that rival Rick Santorum is a “big spender” and “Washington insider” who backed letting convicted felons vote.

Once thought an easy win for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the Michigan Republican primary is shaping up to be one of the biggest tests yet for Romney’s presidential hopes — and an unexpected opportunity for the surging campaign of former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.

It appears that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney now has a Rick Santorum Internet-age problem. Searching for "Romney" using Google now yields a page defining the meaning of the term as "to defecate in terror" within the first five links or so.

President Obama for the first time has opened a sizable lead over his most likely Republican opponents, thanks to growing support among independent voters, according to a new Pew Research Center poll .

Reversing his embarrassing string of setbacks earlier this week when he lost Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri to Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney eked out a narrow win in the straw poll tied to Maine's multiday caucuses Saturday, defeating Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who was the only other candidate to actively campaign in Maine.

Rick Santorum scored victories in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado nominating contests Tuesday night, winning him no actual delegates, but nonetheless blocking Mitt Romney's bid to keep alive a streak of victories in the Republican presidential primary. Santorum scored broad victories in the Minnesota caucus and a primary in Missouri, according to NBC News projections. But Santorum's most significant upset came in Colorado, where the state GOP declared him the apparent victor in caucuses there.

The Romney campaign's broadening of its attack this week to include Rick Santorum reflects some of the uncertainty surrounding votes Tuesday in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri -- the first multi-state election day of the campaign.