It’s been one week since the debate. How many lies has Mitt Romney and his campaign told since? Let’s tally it up.

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1. Pre-Existing Conditions: Within minutes of the debate's conclusion last week, a Romney campaign spokesman tried to explain his candidate's assertion, in response to the question with what he would replace ObamaCare, that "pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan," clearly inferring that he would not alter that provision of ObamaCare.

Afterwards the spokesman said, “what Governor Romney has said is for those with continuous coverage, he would continue to make sure that they receive their coverage.” But that position does not expand coverage for the uninsured with pre-existing conditions, as ObamaCare does. By continuing to try to blur the ...

We have seen the future of electoral politics flashing across the screens of local TV stations from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina. Despite all the excitement about Facebook and Twitter, the critical election battles of 2012 and for some time to come will be fought in the commercial breaks on local network affiliates. This year, according to a fresh report to investors from Needham and Company’s industry analysts, television stations will reap as much as $5 billion—up from $2.8 billion in 2008—from a money-and-media election complex that plays a definitional role in our political discourse. As Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod says, the cacophony of broadcast commercials remains “the nuclear weapon” of American politics.

We’ve known for some time that the pattern, extent and impact of political advertising would be transformed and supercharged by the Supreme Court’s January 2010 Citizens United ruling. But the changes, even at this early stage of the 2012 campaign, have proven to be more dramatic and unsettling than all but the most fretful analysts had imagined.

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For the first time since beginning his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney got a visit from Occupy Wall Street protesters at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa yesterday. Protesters shouted various messages, including condemnations of Romney’s ties to corporate America and the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and slogans supporting the end of wars. They were quickly drowned out by the pro-Romney audience — one attendee countered “go to work!” — and Romney responded by saying, “Isn’t it great to live in a country where people can express their views?”

Shifts happen in the 48 hours before Iowa caucuses, and on Sunday it was clear that the outcome of the nation's first presidential voting Tuesday depends on a huge army of undecided, wavering Iowa caucusgoers.

Forty-one percent said they could still be persuaded to support another candidate, while 51 percent say their minds are made up, according to a Des Moines Register Iowa poll taken Tuesday through Friday.

McClatchy interviews with voters statewide found that they tend to like something about all six major GOP candidates but there's also usually something that makes them uneasy.

It could be Mitt Romney's changes in positions, Ron Paul's foreign policy, Rick Perry's gaffes, Newt Gingrich's history of controversy or a sense that Rick Santorum can't beat President Barack Obama.

Many voters were deciding by spending the holiday ...

The Republicans who would be president, the super PACs and the surrogates had already spent more than $12 million on television ads—almost half of them negative—before the final weekend leading up to Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses.

That doesn’t count the thousands of radio ads, mailings, lighted billboards in Des Moines and costs for staff.

Add it all up and there is a good chance that, when all is said and done Tuesday night, the candidates will have spent $200 a vote to influence the roughly 110,000 Iowans who are expected to participate in the GOP caucuses.

And the really unsettling thing is that the caucuses are just for show.

While the results may so damage some candidates that their runs for the presidency will be finished, they will not actually produce any delegates to the Republican National Convention.

That’s because, as ...

Mitt Romney has a slim lead in the latest Des Moines Register Iowa poll, released Saturday evening, but Ron Paul is close and Rick Santorum is surging.

The results came as Republican presidential candidates spent the last day of 2011 Saturday making their closing arguments to curious, often uncertain voters as the race remained fluid.

In the Iowa poll, taken Tuesday through Friday, Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, led with 24 percent of likely caucus-goers. Next was Paul, a Texas congressman, at 22 percent followed by Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, at 15 percent.

Trailing were former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 12 percent; Texas Gov. Rick Perry, 11 percent, and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, 7 percent.

But results Thursday and Friday only told a different story. While Romney still had 24 percent, Santorum was up to 21 percent, while Paul sank to 18 percent.

The poll capped a frenetic day of campaigning.

Gingrich blasted the Obama ...

Newt Gingrich is still standing.

Three weeks before Iowa Republicans cast the first votes for a 2012 presidential nominee, the man who leads in Iowa and other early voting states such as South Carolina and Florida has emerged seemingly unscathed from a barrage of criticism from rivals in a fiery debate in Iowa.

He still has to survive one more debate — Thursday in Sioux City, Iowa — before the voting starts Jan. 3. At the same time, a wave of TV ads in Iowa echoes the themes of the Saturday night debate in Des Moines — slamming the former Speaker of the House of Representatives as an unprincipled flip-flopper and inflammatory leader who speaks before he thinks.

Those messages could sink in with voters in the final weeks. But if rivals were hoping to goad Gingrich into looking angry or rash, they failed. In fact, if anyone stumbled, it was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his rich-guy offer of a $10,000 bet to another candidate.

"Nobody knocked him off his perch," said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University, which hosted the debate Saturday. "If anything, Gingrich came out more formidable than anyone thought."

Smiling and confident, Gingrich appeared to enjoy the center stage in the two-hour debate in Des Moines, a ...