New Mexico Lt. Gov. John Sanchez (R) is yet to officially join the GOP Senate primary against former Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), but one Republican hopeful is already running to the right of both.

Greg Sowards, who jumped in the race for the seat of retiring Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) late last year, said conservatives looking for a Wilson alternative should take a cautious approach to Sanchez, who most observers expect to enter the race. 

"Heather Wilson is staking her position as a moderate, and John Sanchez, if he comes in, will share that moderate base with her," Sowards said in an interview. "Conservatives will be looking for a true alternative. That's me." 

The state's lieutenant governor, Sowards noted, "is a nice guy, but he has ulterior motives to run, and I think those are apparent. He just got elected lieutenant governor."

After the centrist Wilson entered the race earlier this month, attention focused on Sanchez, a Hispanic statewide officeholder who is an attractive prospect to many New Mexico Republicans.

Sowards is making the rounds in Washington this week to talk up his campaign, while Sanchez is also in town ahead of a possible run.  

If Sanchez gets in, most observers don't expect Sowards to pose a real threat, but in a three-way Republican primary, Sanchez would at least have to battle him for the ear of Tea Party activists in the state.

In 2008, Sowards finished fourth in a GOP primary for the congressional seat now held by Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.).

"I believe that I will be recognized as the Tea Party candidate," said Sowards. "If I'm not, I would be totally crushed."

President Obama would deliver a shellacking to a generic Republican candidate if 2012's presidential election were held today, a new poll found Wednesday.

Forty-seven percent of registered voters said they would choose to reelect Obama, compared to 35 percent who would prefer an unnamed Republican candidate, while 16 percent were undecided, a Pew Research Center poll found.

That puts Obama at basically the same position as President George W. Bush at a similar point in his presidency, and a stronger standing than President Clinton held in March of 1995.

Those figures could seem discouraging to the crop of Republicans considering a challenge to Obama in 2012, from which a clear front-runner has yet to emerge, according to the same Pew poll.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are locked in a virtual tie for the lead of the field among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, the poll found.

Twenty-one percent of those GOP voters would most like to see Romney win the nomination to face off against Obama in 2012, while 20 percent said they'd most like to see Huckabee as the Republican nominee.

Thirteen percent of Republicans would like to see former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin win the nomination, while 11 percent prefer former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.). The rest of the GOP field polled in the single digits, and 15 percent of Republicans said they were undecided.

The poll, conducted March 10-13, has a 3.5 percent margin of error for registered voters and a 5.5 percent margin of error for Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) slammed President Obama's handling of the military operation in Libya on Wednesday, calling it "about as badly run as any foreign operation ... in our lifetime."

In an interview on NBC's "Today Show," Gingrich said while he would not have intervened militarily, now that the U.S. has committed force, anything short of removing Moammar Gadhafi would mean "defeat."

"Having decided to go there, if Gadhafi does not leave power, it will be a defeat for the United States, it will lengthen our engagement, it will increase our costs," said Gingrich, who called the Obama administration's justification for taking action in Libya not a "serious standard," but rather, "a public relations standard."

"The president said on March 3, 'Gadhafi has to go.' Now, they're saying this is a humanitarian mission, which is nonsense," Gingrich said. "If this is not designed to get rid of Gadhafi, this makes no sense at all."

The likely Republican presidential candidate continued to echo the concerns voiced in recent days by those in both parties over Obama's decision not to consult with Congress before taking action and for not laying out a clear goal for the mission in Libya.

After years of supporting immigration reform, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has started emphasizing a border-security-first approach as he makes a run for Senate. 

Flake's views on a guest-worker program and other immigration issues were considered his main vulnerability in a GOP Senate primary. But after watching Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) successfully tack to the right during his primary fight last year, Flake is now following that playbook.

"In the past I have supported a broad approach to immigration reform — increased border security coupled with a temporary worker program. I no longer do," Flake said in a statement published by the Arizona Republic.

"I've been down that road, and it is a dead end. The political realities in Washington are such that a comprehensive solution is not possible, or even desirable given the current leadership. Border security must be addressed before other reforms are tackled."

The congressman made similar remarks to The Ballot Box when asked about the immigration issue.

"You've got to have some mechanism that deals with those who are here illegally," he said in February. "We dealt with it before with a provision that required them to go home and register. But everything like that is on hold until we have better border security."

Flake could face former Rep. J.D. Hayworth or Rep. Trent Franks in the GOP primary, both of whom would look for space on the lawmaker's right flank.

During McCain's primary against Hayworth last year, the senator parried attacks on his past support for immigration reform by repositioning himself as a border hawk.

The senator even released a widely mocked TV ad wherein he walked along a border fence. In McCain's "danged fence" ad, as it became known, he called for the completion of a border barrier that he had previously criticized.

A new survey from Democracy Corps, a group headed by Democratic strategists Stan Greenberg and James Carville, suggests the House is very much in play for Democrats in 2012. 

Democracy Corps polled in 50 Republican-held congressional districts, the vast majority of which voted for President Obama in the 2008 election. GOP freshmen hold 35 of the districts, and the poll found that most remain largely unknown and show clear signs of vulnerability ahead of 2012. 

Democrats must net 25 seats next year to regain control of the House. 

The poll found the Republican incumbents had an average approval rating of just 35 percent across the 50 districts surveyed. Another 38 percent didn't have an opinion on their lawmaker, and the average number of respondents who said they would vote to reelect the GOP incumbent was just 40 percent. 

The conclusion, according to Democracy Corps: "These incumbents are in a weaker position than Democratic incumbents were, even in late 2009, or Republican incumbents were in 2007." 

Real estate mogul Donald Trump will headline the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Day dinner in early June — an event that could mark his first appearance in Iowa as an official candidate for the GOP nomination.

The event, which is sure to be one of the biggest and most attention-grabbing early gatherings in the campaign for the Iowa caucuses, is set for June 10.   

Trump adviser Michael Cohen, who traveled to Iowa earlier this month to court potential supporters, told the Des Moines Register that Trump won't make an announcement at the event, but will make his 2012 intentions clear before he headlines the dinner.  

"Either he will be the keynote speaker as a candidate at the dinner or he will just be an honored guest," Cohen told the paper. 

The headliner for the state party's fall dinner last year was former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. 

Trump committed to speaking at the event last month after a meeting in his Manhattan office with Cohen and state GOP Chairman Matt Strawn, according to the Register. 

On his trip to Iowa earlier this month to gauge support for a potential Trump bid, Cohen met with Strawn and held meetings with at least 18 Republican operatives, fundraisers and organizers, all of whom "expressed not just an interest, but a fervent desire" for Trump to run, Cohen said.

It’s common for long-term members in the minority to call it a career. But not this year.

Jon Huntsman’s possible presidential bid faces two kinds of doubters — about his ideology and about his electability. 

As President Obama struggles to define the military mission there, Republicans argue he is an indecisive, uncertain leader.