Presidential races

A new poll looking ahead to the 2016 presidential race finds former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with double-digit leads over Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) in the high-profile Republicans’ home state of Florida.

In hypothetical match-ups, Clinton leads Bush 51 to 40 percent and tops Rubio by 52-41 in the crucial state, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Tuesday he's open to "thousands of exceptions" to a ban on abortion. 

Paul has said he believes life begins at conception, but in an interview with CNN the Republican emphasized he is also a physician who treats each case individually.

"What I would say is that there are thousands of exceptions," Paul told CNN host Wolf Blitzer in response to a question about exceptions to a ban. 

"You know, I'm a physician and every individual case is going to be different and everything's going to be particular to that individual case and what's going on with that mother and the medical circumstances of that mother," he said.

The Kentucky senator will keynote the Iowa Republican Party's annual Lincoln Day Dinner on May 10 in Cedar Rapids. 

Leading Republicans called on their party to adopt a more inclusive tone Monday — but in doing so one used some controversial rhetoric to describe President Obama, calling him a "socialist."

Republican National Committeeman Henry Barbour, a top GOP strategist and one of the authors of the Republican National Committee's detailed plan to help the party reboot, used the term about the president during a conversation with The Hill about the GOP's need to improve its primary process.

"If we want to focus on a handful of issues and try to impact some primaries and lose the generals, that's really not going to effect public policy. We all want to make America strong economically and militarily and every other way but you can't do that if you're not in office," Barbour told The Hill. "We've got a socialist in office right now — how's that working for us?"

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Conservatives said the Republican National Committee plan would make it easier for establishment candidates to succeed.

The Republican National Committee said "it will be increasingly difficult" to win the White House unless the GOP transforms. 

The RNC chairman announced a new initiative to win over African-American, Hispanic and Asian voters.

Her fiercely anti-establishment speech received the strongest response yet from a packed auditorium.

Ben Carson, who drew conservative attention following his controversial National Prayer Breakfast speech, is retiring from medicine.

The straw poll has a mixed record of picking winners, but can give the victor legitimacy within the conservative movement.