Politics

If voters were expecting a knockout in Thursday night's CNN debate, they were disappointed. Both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are still standing. But the news of the evening was Rick Santorum's challenge to Romney's record on health care.

"What Gov. Romney just said is that government run, top-down medicine is working pretty well in Massachusetts and he supports it," Santorum said as he challenged Romney over his state's health care provisions. "Folks, we can't give this issue away in this election; it is about fundamental freedom."

Romney responded, "I didn't say I was in favor to top-down, government-run health care. Ninety-two percent of the residents in my state had health insurance. If you don't want to buy insurance, you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill … We said no more free riders … Either get the insurance or help pay for your care." more >>

Newt Gingrich has pulled a Spanish-language ad accusing rival Mitt Romney of being "anti-immigrant" after sharp criticism from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

"This kind of language is more than just unfortunate. It's inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn't belong in this campaign,'' Rubio told The Miami Herald Wednesday when asked about the ad. "The truth is that neither of these two men is anti-immigrant. Both are pro-legal immigration and both have positive messages that play well in the Hispanic community."

Rubio's remarks came a day after he criticized Gingrich for comparing Romney to former Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Crist is not well liked among Republicans in the state. Crist lost to Rubio in the race to decide the Republican's nominee for the Senate in 2010. He then left the Republican Party and ran against Rubio as an independent in the general election. more >>

GOP presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich continued to shrug off Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's claims of a damning "secret" file.

In a Wednesday interview with NBC's "Today" Show, Gingrich dismissed the California congresswoman as living "in a San Francisco environment of strange fantasies and strange understandings of reality."

Responding to remarks made by Pelosi on Tuesday that a Gingrich presidency would "never happen," Gingrich said, "I have no idea what's in Nancy Pelosi's head. If she knows something, spit it out. Tell us what it is. I have no idea what she's talking about." more >>

Ralph Shortey, a Republican Oklahoma state senator, has introduced a bill banning the use of aborted fetuses in food.

The bill, brought forward Tuesday, is a preemptive and meant to raise awareness, as no cases of aborted fetuses have ever been discovered in foods or food products in the U.S.

Senate Bill 1418, requested to become effective in November 2012, asserts, "No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients." more >>

A new Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday reveals that evangelicals and Tea Party supporters are breaking hard for Newt Gingrich in Florida, putting the former House Speaker within two points of front-runner and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

A press release describing the poll states Gingrich "leads among white evangelical Christians 43 - 30 percent and among those who consider themselves to be tea party supporters 43 - 28 percent." Each segment makes up roughly a third of primary voters, according to Quinnipiac pollsters, "although there is substantial overlap among those two groups."

Coming off the heels of his victory in the South Carolina GOP primary, rising evangelical and Tea Party support has allowed Gingrich to slash nearly 10 points off of Romney's lead with less than a week to go before Florida's GOP primary. more >>

Florida political experts are warning that an aging Cuban community and the corresponding growth of pro-Democratic Latinos suggest that, without changes, Republican presidential candidates will have difficulty winning the state in future national elections.

And despite a new Quinnipiac poll showing Newt Gingrich surging in the Florida GOP primary, he might have a harder time winning Florida in a national election than Mitt Romney.

When it comes to analyzing the Latino vote, a recent poll conducted by Latino Decisions for ABC News/Univision underscores this dynamic. In current head-to-head matchups, Obama would win the Florida Latino vote, 50 to 40 percent, against Romney, or 52 to 38 percent against Gingrich. By comparison, President George W. Bush won 56 percent of the Florida Latino vote in 2004. more >>