On the Trail: Dec. 20
The GOP establishment backs Romney; Paul is on the rise.
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Michele Bachmann - Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann placed second in the Tea Party Patriots’ straw poll conducted over the weekend with 28 percent, a surprisingly good showing given her recent single-digit polling numbers. Bachmann also took aim at rival Newt Gingrich, who won the poll with 31 percent, accusing him of speaking to her in a condescending manner during the last GOP debate. “If [Gingrich] disagrees with my assertion, then he needs to make that claim and put it on the table,” she said on NBC’s Meet the Press. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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Newt Gingrich - Newt Gingrich won the Tea Party Patriots’ weekend straw poll with 31 percent of the vote, and in an effort to keep far-right conservatives interested, he’s espousing some scary judicial views. In an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, the former House speaker said that if the president or Congress disagrees with a Supreme Court ruling, the ruling should be ignored.(Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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Jon Huntsman - Jon Huntsman’s dogged determination to win the upcoming New Hampshire primary is starting to pay off — kind of. He received two newspaper endorsements Sunday, from the Valley News and the Keene Sentinel. He earned third place in the state in last week’s Suffolk University/7NEWS poll of likely Republican primary voters.(Photo: Matthew Cavanaugh/Getty Images)
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Rick Perry - Texas Gov. Rick Perry is taking a bus tour across Iowa, doing what his campaign says he does best, engaging with voters face to face. But at a town hall event Sunday, he tangled with a college student over natural gas extraction and then again with a 14-year-old girl about gays serving in the military, who asked why Perry wants to “to deny them their freedom when they're fighting for your rights." (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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Ron Paul - Iowa is looking more interesting, thanks to Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Just two weeks before the state’s Republican primary caucuses, he’s leading a new Public Policy Polling survey with 23 percent, followed by Mitt Romney (20 percent) and Newt Gingrich (14 percent). The new numbers have pundits whispering: Could Paul win the Hawkeye State?(Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
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