Campaigns

Herman Cain issued a statement Thursday clarifying comments on CNN in which he said abortion "ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president, not some politician, not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family."

Cain was scrambling to defend himself as opposing abortion rights after the comments raised eyebrows with conservatives, who generally support government restrictions on abortion procedures. Rick Santorum sent a fundraising appeal to supporters Thursday night, saying he was "absolutely floored" by Cain's comments.

"Herman Cain’s pro-choice position is similar to those held by John Kerry, Barack Obama and many others on the liberal left. You cannot be both personally against abortion while condoning it — you can’t have it both ways. We must defend the defenseless, period," Santorum wrote.

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Mitt Romney said Thursday that President Obama deserves some credit for the death of Moammar Gadhafi, breaking with other Republican candidates who had steadfastly refused to offer the president praise after the killing.

A reporter at an appearance in Council Bluffs, Iowa asked Romney if Obama deserved some credit.

"Yes. Yes. Absolutely," Romney said, according to CNN.

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Former Sen. Rick Santorum said Sunday that his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination had more than enough money to compete.

Santorum said his “grassroots” campaign, which has had struggles raising money, was able to make payroll and that his fundraising had zoomed up in the last weeks of the recently ended third quarter.

“If you have a huge campaign and lots of consultants, you need a lot of money,” Santorum said on "Fox News Sunday."

“I don’t. I try to just be the candidate that’s real, that’s out there and not scripted and not messaged by a group of folks who think that reading polls is the way you get votes in this country,” he added.

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Gingrich said if offered a vice presidential spot, it would be his "duty as a citizen" to consider the position.

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Gary Johnson joined fellow Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul in criticizing the drone killing of U.S.-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, saying he had "mixed feelings" about the strike since he believed Awlaki to be "entitled to due process."

“Well I — as president of the United States I would have been a lot more transparent about that, and I understand all of the accusations against al-Awlaki and they are very significant, and I don’t want to minimize at all the threat that he was posing to the United States. But he is a U.S. citizen, he was a U.S. citizen, and never before have we targeted a U.S. citizen for death," the former New Mexico governor said on Fox News.

Awlaki, who was born in the United States, was an outspoken cleric cited in terrorist attacks, including that of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, and Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square last year.

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A majority of American voters believe that President Barack Obama deserves blame for the country's economic troubles, a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday said. It is the first time since the president's election that a majority of voters feel that way.

24 percent of Americans believe that Obama deserves a "great deal of blame" - a rise of 10 percentage points since mid-2009 - while 36 percent think that former president George W. Bush should get the majority of the blame. Bush's numbers show a decline of 7 percent over the same period, showing that voters are increasingly unwilling to blame current economic conditions on the previous administration.

The shifts may complicate the White House's ability to sell the president's new jobs plan - even amongst Democratic allies - and show discontent with the implement of Obama's stimulus package.

Worse for the president is that eight in ten believe the economy is in a recession, and six in ten do not believe that the economy will improve by next year.

The troubling economic news is battering the president's popularity, which has sunk below 40 percent in the latest McClatchy-Marist poll.

The same poll showed Republican challengers gaining on the president in head-to-head matchups.

Real estate mogul Donald Trump called Texas Gov. Rick Perry a "terrific guy" Thursday, but then called him by the wrong name.

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Republican presidential hopeful says history proves FEMA isn’t necessary.

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has no chance of securing the GOP presidential nomination, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Friday, just one day before she won the Ames Straw Poll.

"She doesn't stand a chance to win the Republican nomination," Reid said.

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Rep. Ron Paul told Iowans "it's the bipartisanship that we've had that has endorsed all our problems."

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