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Barack Obama - Obama 2012 is reportedly preparing to make Republican frontrunner and likely nominee Mitt Romney a huge target by attacking his character and business background, Politico reports.  The campaign will highlight a "weirdness factor" and Romney's record as CEO of Bain Capitol, a consulting firm that created and eliminated jobs. The campaign will allegedly take notes from the political playbook employed by former President George W. Bush when he beat Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

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Michele Bachmann - Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is poised to win the Ames straw poll in Iowa this weekend, is calling on President Obama to force Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to resign, and said during a campaign stop in the state that keeping him is "a tremendous disservice to the American people," ABC News reports. Bachmann also criticized Obama for spending the weekend at Camp David after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the nation’s credit rating.(Photo by Steve Pope/Getty Images)

Photo By Steve Pope/Getty Images

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Herman Cain - Herman Cain is taking a weeklong "Common Sense Solutions" bus tour through Iowa that will end at the state's upcoming Ames straw poll. The Black Republican also has released an online video ad that seeks to answer the question, "Who is Herman Cain?" In the ad, Cain touts his experience as a businessman, which he says would make him a better president than a "career politician."

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Newt Gingrich - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is now running a different kind of campaign. Instead of consultants, he's using volunteers from his home state of Georgia to phone voters and is holding free Google+ videoconferences on different issues, the Quad-City Times reports. A leaner, downsized campaign "gets you down to a pace of you and the voters, where you and the voters are connecting and there's not a lot of clutter in between," Gingrich said.

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Tim Pawlenty - As Republican candidates gear up for this weekend's critical Iowa straw poll, Tim Pawlenty is predicting that he will do better than expected, even though he has consistently trailed Rep. Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney in the state. "The proof will be in the pudding," Pawlenty said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. "And I think you'll see our campaign moving up from back of the pack to closer to front of the pack."(AP Photo/NBC News, William B. Plowman)

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Jon Huntsman - Jon Huntsman has continually been at the bottom of almost every poll of the Republican presidential field. In an effort to elevate his standing, Huntsman has added a "fixer" to his struggling campaign—political veteran Tom Ingram, who has a well-earned reputation for bringing order to campaigns, reports NBC News' "First Read."(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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Ron Paul - Revolution PAC, a political action committee formed to support Rep. Ron Paul's presidential bid, has announced plans to launch a fundraising "superbomb" on Sept. 19 that aims to raise as much money as possible in one day. The Texas Republican has made recent gains in the polls, coming in third in a USA Today/Gallup survey at 14 percent, behind Mitt Romney (24 percent) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (17 percent), who is expected to announce a presidential bid this weekend.(REUTERS /BRIAN FRANK /LANDOV)

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Mitt Romney - Mitt Romney, who faced criticism for his silence during the debt ceiling crisis, is taking advantage of the Standard & Poor's downgrade of the nation's credit rating to criticize President Obama's stewardship of the economy. "The president is the person that leads the nation and leads the effort in Washington, and if it's tough working there, welcome to the real world," Romney said in a speech in New Hampshire this week. "I'm afraid the president is just out of his depth when it comes to understanding how the private economy works."(AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

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Rick Santorum - Rick Santorum, who says he entered the presidential race to stop government-controlled health care, told the Des Moines Register editorial board on Aug. 5 that people who are worried about medical costs should reconsider some of their "creature comforts." Recalling a woman who mentioned her monthly prescription bill, he said, "You're complaining that you're paying $200 a month and it keeps you alive? What's your cable bill? I mean, what's your cell phone bill? Because she had a cell phone. And how can you say that you complain that you have $200 to keep you alive and that's a problem? No, that's a blessing!"(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)