Frank James, NPR

Whether Herman Cain is leaning towards staying in or leaving the contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Iowa voters are trying to help him reach a decision by abandoning him.

Newt Gingrich is taking the traditional frontrunner's tactic of acting like his party's inevitable presidential nominee to a whole a new level.

In an interview with Jake Tapper of ABC News, Gingrich sounded like LeBron James vowing to bring Miami an NBA championship.

Many people noticed how prickly Mitt Romney seemed in his interview the other day with Fox News' Brett Baier. Maybe you would be brittle too if you were running for president and someone you hadn't figured would become a factor in the race for the Republican presidential nomination was all of a sudden a big deal.

The big theme out of Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate in Washington was Newt Gingrich's compassionate stance toward illegal immigrants who have put down deep roots in the U.S.

That position by Gingrich, who has recently surged to join Mitt Romney at the head of the Republican field according to recent polls, conflicted with the more hardline views of many conservative voters.

Many of those GOP voters who will decide their party's nominee oppose allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S., period.

In one of the stranger turns in a Republican presidential race full of them, Texas Gov. Rick Perry challenged Rep. Nancy Pelosi to debate him next week over his proposal to make Congress a part-time body while slashing lawmakers' pay and their staffs.

Why Pelosi? Apparently because one of her fellow House minority leaders, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, tore into the proposal after Perry introduced it earlier in the week.

In a classic case of taking a political opponent's comments out of context, some of the presidents Republican opponents are attacking President Obama for a remark in which he said U.S. policymakers have been "lazy" in recent decades for not creating the best environment to attract foreign direct investment to the U.S.

"Volatile" is one of the words that probably best describes the race for the Republican presidential nomination and a new CBS News poll captures that flux. The national poll indicates a three-way tie, showing Herman Cain at 18 percent and Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich at 15 percent each.

That's essentially a tie since the margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

The 2012 presidential election could be close, with President Obama needing support from every segment of his political base to win re-election.

So the president's move (made through the State Department) to delay his controversial decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until beyond Election Day 2012 isn't really a shocker. The White House, for the record, denies that politics played a role in the decision.

When the Republican presidential candidates meet Wednesday evening in Michigan for their ninth debate (it feels like there've been many more than that) the main topic up for discussion is supposed to be the economy.

But is there anyone who expects that the travails of Herman Cain won't be a subtopic?

The former Godfather Pizza CEO's flat-tax plan encountered severe turbulence at the last debate and it is likely to experience more during the encounter at Oakland University outside Detroit.

Herman Cain's campaign spent late Wednesday accusing the rival presidential campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry of unleashing the information that he had sexual harassment settlements in his background, an allegation the Texan's campaign has denied.

As Politico reported, Cain called out the Perry campaign directly during a Tea Party event:

It should have been another good weekend for Herman Cain. It wasn't.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry likely didn't know when he twice referred to Herman Cain as "brother" during Tuesday night's debate that his attempt at easy camaraderie would set a lot of people's nerves on edge.

But he did.

That's because in the U.S. when a white man calls a black man "brother" and if they are not actually brothers (think adoption), or in a Greek-letter fraternity, or soldiers sharing a fighting position, indeed, if they are strangers or close to it, many a brotherized black man will immediately feel condescended to.

As Republican presidential candidates gird for their eighth debate, this one in Las Vegas, Nev., Tuesday evening, a central question is: how will the Herman Cain phenomenon shape the event?

With the one-time pizza company CEO near or at the top of the GOP field depending on which poll you consult, he's likely to draw more attention from the other candidates at the debate than was true in any of their previous meetings. The two-hour debate will be carried by CNN at 8 pm ET.

Anita Perry's defense Thursday of her husband Texas Gov. Rick Perry may provide an important piece of the puzzle that explains the remarkably underwhelming nature of her spouse's presidential campaign.

In South Carolina, Anita Perry made it sound like the governor was essentially talked into making the race, perhaps by others but definitely by her.

According to Mrs. Perry, it was she, not her husband, who first heard the divine call that her husband should run for president.

Mitt Romney put up respectable if not breath-taking fundraising numbers for the third quarter of 2011, collecting somewhere north of $14 million.

But Romney is only raising money now to compete in the state caucuses and primaries to capture the Republican presidential nomination; he's not yet raising any money for the general election.