Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain accused the media and political establishment of being afraid of giving him enough attention to procure the GOP nomination.

"They do not want Barack Obama to go toe-to-toe with me as the Republican presidential nominee," Cain said to a group of Tea Partiers on Wednesday in South Florida.

Cain argued the political and media establishment is "afraid" of potential Republican candidates Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

"They are doubly scared that a real black man might run against Barack Obama," Cain added.

Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO, is one of the few GOP presidential hopefuls to get to the exploratory committee phase of their candidacy. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty  and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer have also announced plans to form an exploratory committee.

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Libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised about $3 million during the first fundraising quarter of 2011 as he contemplates another presidential bid.

Paul took in $1 million through Liberty PAC, his federal political action committee, and $2 million through Campaign for Liberty, 501 c(4) a non-profit associated with Paul that federal law bars from directly contributing to political organizations, meaning that it could not be transferred to a potential Paul presidential campaign.

The majority of Paul's fundraising haul came from small donors who contributed online, according to Liberty PAC director Jesse Benton.

The total is impressive for Paul, who only relaunched Liberty PAC in early February and raised $100,000 during the first 48 hours following its reestablishment. 

Paul, who ran in the GOP primary in 2008, recently said he is "50-50" on whether he is going to run for president in 2012.

The congressman's fundraising totals were first reported by Politico.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney raised almost $1.9 million for his federal and state PACs in the first quarter of 2011.

Romney sources said that the potential 2012 presidential candidate raked in the money while dispatching over $400,000 to Republican candidates and conservative causes.

There was no indication as to the breakdown in the haul between Romney's federal PAC, Free and Strong America, and his state-level organizations in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan and Alabama.

But his first quarter numbers may well signal a more brisk pace in his fundraising compared to last year; Free and Strong America raked in just under $5.6 million for the entire year in 2010.

Romney's PAC dispatched plenty of donations in the first few months of this year already, notably to House and Senate candidates and to state parties.

Gov. Mitch Daniels said he wouldn't campaign on his record as governor of Indiana if he ran for president but would instead focus on "the future."

"I don't think we elect resumes," he told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Thursday. "Past records may be of some value just simply for establishing credibility."

Daniels said he was "very proud of things we've gotten done here in Indiana," but that his two terms as governor won't be the issue in 2012.

"Campaigns for public office ought to be about the future, about specific plans to make life better for everyone," he said. "And if I ever did become a candidate again that's the way I'd conduct myself."

Daniels is mulling a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He told Mitchell he remains focused on the current state legislative session, which must end by April 29.

During the interview, he again urged congressional Republicans to set aside their views on abortion and other social issues in order to effectively tackle fiscal problems related to entitlement programs.

"When we get to .50 caliber issues like that," he said, "at that point, maybe for a little while, we could agree to disagree on other questions. That's really an expression of my sense of the urgency of our debt problem and the economic stagnation that is contributing to it."

He made similar comments during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Asked by Mitchell whether he thought questions about President Obama's natural born American citizenship were relevant, Daniels didn't hesitate. "I don't," he said.

"The American people that elected President Obama had a chance to weigh it at the time," the governor added. "I have my differences with the president, but they have nothing to do with things like that."

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) confirmed he will make a decision on a presidential bid by the beginning of May.

"We're trying to finish out the exploratory process, and I think by the first week of May, we'll have done that," Gingrich told reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday.

The former Speaker was at the Capitol to meet with House GOP freshmen. He will also address the Congressional Healthcare Caucus Policy Forum.

At the beginning of March Gingrich announced the formation of a website that would explore a 2012 bid but stopped short of formally filing papers for an exploratory committee.

He spoke to supporters in a conference call after that to say he will likely announce in early May outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) rallied Tea Party activists outside the U.S. Capitol Thursday, pledging to not back down in the current budget standoff.

The Minnesota Republican, who's weighing a run for the White House in 2012, said given the size of the federal budget deficit, conservatives "can't afford anything less than a fight." 

"You are here to hold all of us accountable," Bachmann told a crowd of a few hundred activists.

The event was organized by Tea Party Patriots and billed as a "Continuing Revolution Rally." Along with Bachmann, the rally featured Republican Reps. Steve King (Iowa), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Mike Pence (Ind.) and Louie Gohmert (Texas).

"Cutting $61 billion, in my opinion, is a starting point," Bachmann said. "It is not the goal."

The event came as Republican leaders and the White House appear to be moving closer to a budget agreement that would avert a government shutdown. But any agreement could fall well short of the $61 billion in cuts included in the measure already approved by the House. 

Bachmann promised activists Thursday that she would hold firm on that number as just a baseline for any agreement, and said her No. 1 priority in the budget fight is defunding the healthcare law. Bachmann has said she won't vote for any budget agreement that doesn't defund the law.

The leader of the House Tea Party Caucus also warned that "cutting off funding to groups like Planned Parenthood has to be one of those issues that we're just not going to back down on."

The crowd repeatedly roared its approval for Bachmann and made clear it wasn't in a compromising mood. One activist carried a sign that read, "Keep Your Promises. $100 billion." Another shouted that Republican leaders were "afraid" of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

President Obama's job-approval rating among young people has gone up, even as his overall approval rating has hit an all-time low in certain surveys.

A new poll of 18- to 29-year-olds by Harvard University's Institute of Politics (IOP) found 55 percent of so-called Millennials approve of Obama's presidency — a six-point increase over a similar IOP survey in October. His approval rating is even higher among those attending a four-year college, where 60 percent back Obama. That was a nine-point increase from the last survey.

A recent Quinnipiac University survey found Obama's approval rating at just 42 percent, but that survey was of registered voters. Harvard's poll was conducted in online surveys of 3,018 18- to 29-year-old U.S. citizens, and has a margin of error of 2.4 percent. It was in the field from Feb. 11 through March 2.

The findings are good news for Obama, who was propelled into the White House in 2008 with the votes and volunteer hours of millions of young people. Their renewed enthusiasm could help boost his reelection bid.

One other finding that emerged from the survey is that Facebook "statuses" are the second biggest source of news about the presidential race for Millenials. While major national newspapers were the preferred news source for 49 percent of respondents, 36 percent cited Facebook as their top go-to for political coverage.

This comes as campaigns have increasingly sought to boost their social-media presences. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), for instance, recently announced in a video posted on Facebook that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee.

The chairman of Iowa's Republican Party on Thursday backed an effort to possibly move the 2012 Republican National Convention out of Florida if that state sticks to its January primary date.

Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn said he would join the chairwoman of South Carolina's Republican Party, Karen Floyd, in an effort to reopen the process to select the site of the 2012 convention, which is slated to be held in Tampa.

"If Florida refuses to move its primary date into compliance with RNC rules, that consequence should be the re-opening of the process to select the site of the 2012 RNC Convention," Strawn said in a statement. "I join South Carolina Chairwoman Floyd today in beginning preparations to request that the Committee convene a special task force to select a new site for the 2012 Convention outside the state of Florida.”

At issue is the late January primary date set by Florida Republicans, which would leapfrog Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in the process. Those latter three states traditionally host the first three nominating contests of the presidential cycle.

Florida Republicans maintain that their state is more representative of the broader profile of the GOP, since the state's often crucial to any White House aspirant's hope of winning the presidency.

A similar controversy plagued Democrats in the 2008 contest between then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both Florida and Michigan set their primary dates earlier than party rules allowed, forcing the party to halve the value of those states' delegates' votes.

Voters are looking for a shorter 2012 election cycle compared to past elections, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in explaining the relative absence of GOP presidential candidates.

Priebus said that it made sense to him that none of the major candidates has formally thrown his or her hat in the ring, save for Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota.

"I think people are taking their time," Priebus said in a Web interview with NBC News. "I think people are taking their time because the American people are looking for a shorter cycle this time around."

Priebus cited the 2008 presidential cycle, in which candidates jumped into the race as soon as late 2006, as "maybe the case of not the best pre-primary season," but said he expected no shortage of candidates when the time comes.

Many of the candidates who are expected to run have refused so far to formally jump into the race. While declaring one's candidacy also allows a potential candidate to raise money and build infrastructure, it also costs plenty of money to run those operations and risks fatigue among staff.

"It's a matter of how much time and how much money all these candidates want to spend in winning the nomination. I think the media cycle's very fast; you can do a lot more in less time," Priebus said.

So absent have Republicans been from the presidential campaign that a debate planned for May, slated to be the first of the cycle, was pushed back to September, for fear of a lack of candidates.

Meanwhile, a number of long-shot candidates looking to win the media spotlight have flirted with running, and Priebus refused to rule any of them, including Donald Trump, out as serious candidates for the nomination.

"I think there's a lot of serious candidates that are going to be running for president," he said. "I think there's going to be a lot of people like Donald Trump, Tim Pawlenty, Haley — There will be plenty of candidates, I think, who are going to be testing the waters. Who gets in is anybody's guess."