Currently, Romney and his affiliated super PAC aer outspending Santorum 60:1 across the country, according to Politico.

For example, in Michigan, Romney is expected to deploy at least $1.2 million in a massive advertising campaign targeting Santorum. Santorum is responding with roughly $42,000 in ads on Fox News in Michigan.

For Santorum, who’s run a shoestring campaign, if he could ever get his fundraising in line with Romney; he likely could easily win the nomination.

But Santorum’s lack of funds to go head-to-head with Romney’s ad campaigns could produce a similar result to that in Iowa and Florida.

In the days leading up to both the Iowa cacuses and the Florida primary, Romney was trailing in the polls. However, after his campaign and super PAC poured millions into ad campaigns in both states, Romney walked away with a victory in Florida and a close loss in Iowa.

Plus, while Santorum is forced to focus on the upcoming states like Michigan; Romney’s super PAC is already buying air time in states that will vote on Super Tuesday.

Currently, Romney is in trouble in Michigan. Santorum has seen his campaign vault into first place in some polls and the former Pennsylvania Senator is threatening to possibly carry most of the Midwest in the primary season.

Still, even with Romney’s massive money advantage, he hasn’t been able to put Santorum away. What could help Santorum is if fellow conservative Newt Gingrich drops out of the race.

But so far, Gingrich hasn’t shown any signs that he is even considering dropping out of the race.

A former aide to Rep. Hastings, Winsome Packer, claimed Hastings repeatedly made unwanted sexual advances when he would visit Vienna on business for the commission.

The commission advises the U.S. on policy about security, human rights, and other issues involving Europe.

Last year, Packer sued the commission, Hastings, and commission official Fred Turner. Packer claimed Turner retaliated against her after she complained about the alleged harassment.

Federal judge Barbara Rothstein dismissed the lawsuit against both Turner and Rep. Hastings, but the suit can go forward against the Commission.

Hastings issued a statement late Monday saying the case was, “ridiculous, bizarre, frivolous, and has wasted – and is still wasting – a whole lot of folks’ time and money.”

(TM and © Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Residents of the small South Florida city decided on a new Mayor and two new city commissioners.

Incumbent Mayor Philip Stoddard narrowly defeated former South Miami mayor and state representative Julio Robaina. Robaina, 50, was mayor from 1998 to 2002.

Just three hundred votes separated the two.

Joshua Liebman defeated Sally Philips for the Group 2 commission seat.

Bob Welsh claimed the Group 3 seat over Gabriel Edmond and former vice-mayor Armando Oliveros.

Oliveros stepped down from the commission in October 1999 when he was facing money laundering charges. He served eight years in a Pensacola federal prison.

According to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, Santorum leads the GOP presidential primary field with 30 percent of the vote.

Mitt Romney is a close second at 27 percent with Ron Paul coming in third with 12 percent and Newt Gingrich a distant fourth with 10 percent.

Romney’s numbers have remained stable throughout the primary process, but Santorum has gone from being in third place to taking the lead in just over a month’s time. The former Pennsylvania Senator has gained 14 percent since the last survey.

Conservatives have started to unify behind Santorum as well. Last month, the conservative caucus was split evenly between Santorum and Gingrich.

However, in the latest poll, Santorum has nearly 40 percent of the vote compared to Gingrich’s 12 percent.

Additionally, Santorum enjoys a wide lead among those who consider themselves tea party supporters and amongst white evangelicals, who make up a large percentage of the Republican vote.

If the Santorum surge continues, it will increase pressure on Newt Gingrich to seriously consider dropping out of the race.

If the goal is to win the nomination for a conservative, either Gingrich or Santorum will have to drop out.

The problem for Santorum is his delegate count is not keeping up with his popularity surge.

If Santorum can keep the momentum going into Super Tuesday on March 6 and pick up several states, then he has a fighting chance of beating Romney.

Still, 60 percent of Republican primary voters nationwide said they could still change their minds about whom to support. Therefore, the race remains extremely fluid.

According to the poll, Obama’s approval rating among Catholics stood at 46 percent this week. That’s down three percent from the previous week, but inside the margin of error for the study, meaning there’s been virtually no change in the rating.

In addition, Gallup found that Obama’s approval among Catholics had no correlation to how often they attended church.

Last week, the White House announced plans to force insurers to pay for birth control and added rules to pacify religious groups that oppose birth control.

The new rules make sure religious institutions don’t have to pay for contraceptives coverage for employees, but that insurance companies do.

Republicans in Washington have called the rule an assault against religious freedom, but most women’s groups and the general public have come out in favor of the new rule.

Ironically, the very representatives who are fighting the coverage rule are protected by a similar rule in place for all federal health care plans.

Catholic groups, who don’t support birth control, have been leading the charge against the new rules. However, several of the most prominent Catholic hospitals already provide the coverage to their employees.

According to a new Pew Research poll, Santorum has surged 16 points in the last month and is now leading the GOP field nationally.

Santorum picked up 30 percent of the vote in the poll compared to Mitt Romney’s 28 percent, Newt Gingrich’s 17 percent, and Ron Paul’s 12 percent.

But, while Santorum’s surge has been impressive in the Republican ranks; none of the Republicans are within striking distance of President Obama in the Pew poll.

The poll found Obama leads Romney, 52-44 percent; Obama leads Santorum, 53-43 percent; and leads Newt Gingrich, 57-39 percent.

The poll found that Obama has gained roughly 3 percent of the overall vote as Romney has started to decline since last November.

Most notably for Obama is that he has taken the lead among independents in the new poll. A month ago, Obama only garnered the support of 40 percent of independents in a Pew poll.

The latest Pew poll found Obama has 51 percent support amongst independent voters.

Further, the poll found that the number of independent voters who believe mitt Romney is “honest and trustworthy” has plummeted from 53 percent to 41 percent.

At the same time, the number of independents who said he is not honest and trustworthy has jumped from 35 to 42 percent.

Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, David Rivera and former Representative Lincoln Diaz-Dalart all endorsed Rep. Mack for the Republican nomination to take on Senator Nelson.

Mack was a late addition to the Senate race, but immediately vaulted to the top of the Republican field which was weak at best. Mack’s declaration already moved Adam Hasner out of the Senate race and into a House race in South Florida.

“I am truly honored to have earned the trust and support of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, David Rivera and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Florida is a better place because of their dedication to the people whom they represent and fight for every day,” Mack said.

Still, Mack faces an uphill battle against Senator Nelson.

The Democrat enjoys a large fundraising lead over Mack and has not been tied too much to the Obama administration. This will be Mack’s target in the coming months, to chain Nelson to Obama and hope that Obama doesn’t have coattails in the fall.

At a gathering in Portland, state Republican Chairman Charlie Webster announced Romney had won with 2,190 votes, or 39 percent, compared to 1,996 — about 36 percent — for Ron Paul, the only other candidate to aggressively compete in the state. Rick Santorum received 989 votes and Newt Gingrich won 349, but neither actively campaigned there. Other candidates drew 61 votes.

The totals reflected about 84 percent of the state’s precincts. Webster insisted that any caucus results that come in after Saturday wouldn’t be counted no matter how close the vote.

“Some caucuses decided not to participate in this poll and will caucus after this announcement,” Webster said. “Their results will not be factored in. The absent votes will not be factored into this announcement after the fact.”

Romney’s win, combined with his victory in the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington hours earlier, helped slow an embarrassing skid that began Tuesday when he lost contests in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado to Santorum. The twin triumphs dampened the perception — for now — that conservatives were unwilling to support Romney.

Romney’s campaign has demonstrated skill and flexibility in winning a big state like Florida and eking out a victory in a low-turnout contest like Maine, where organization and voter contact are essential. Out of Maine’s 258,000 registered Republicans, nearly 5,600 cast ballots in the weeklong contest.

But questions about Romney’s durability as the party’s presumed front-runner persist. Fully 61 percent of Maine voters selected another candidate than Romney in a state practically in his back yard. And Romney’s showing was down considerably from 2008, when he won 51 percent of the vote.

Maine’s caucuses began Feb. 4 and continued throughout the week. Several communities elected to hold their caucuses at a later date.

Caucuses in Washington County that had been scheduled for Saturday were postponed until Feb. 18 because of a major snowstorm that blanketed the region. Earlier, party Executive Director Michael Quatrano said county officials had been told the results of that caucus would not count toward the total.

But Washington County GOP Chairman Chris Gardner objected, saying he had known his county’s tally wouldn’t be included in Saturday’s announcement but didn’t realize it wouldn’t be counted at all. He said he had called state party leaders and “expressed my complete and utter dismay.”
Gardner, a Romney supporter, said the snowstorm had left him no choice but to postpone the caucuses.

“Refusal to reconsider under those circumstances would be extremely disheartening,” he told The Associated Press. “I trust that the party will make the right decision here.”
He added, “We will proceed next Saturday. We’ll have our vote and we are going to submit it to the state party for them to reconsider.”

Many Paul supporters were angry.

“There’s a very good chance that you’ll find that Washington County goes for Ron Paul,” said Mark Willis, a county coordinator for the Paul campaign.

His wife, Violet, added, “We don’t want to be disenfranchised.”

Speaking to supporters in Portland, Paul expressed disappointment that only a portion of the state’s caucuses had counted toward the total.

“I wish all the caucuses had met today,” Paul said, adding, “It’s almost like we could call it a tie.”

Maine’s nonbinding presidential straw poll had drawn virtually none of the hype surrounding recent contests in Florida and Nevada, where candidates poured millions of dollars into television and radio advertising.

Romney’s campaign had placed only a small cable television ad buy airing Friday and Saturday, at a cost of several thousand dollars. But he sent surrogates to the state in recent days and hosted a telephone town hall in addition to Friday’s campaign stop.

Romney consistently declined to criticize Paul, however.

Instead, he lobbed indirect criticism at Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, and Gingrich, a former House speaker, by repeating intensifying rhetoric of recent days that paints them as tainted Washington insiders.

“I have never spent a day in Washington working,” Romney said. “I expect to go there, get it fixed and then go home.”

Romney won 11 delegates in Maine and Texas Rep. Ron Paul won 10, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were shut out.

(TM and © Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

The new rule will make sure religious institutions don’t have to pay for contraceptives coverage for employees, but that insurance companies do.

Republicans in Washington have called the rule an assault against religious freedom, but most women’s groups and the general public have come out in favor of the new rule.

Ironically, the very representatives who are fighting the coverage rule are protected by a similar rule in place for all federal health care plans.

Catholic groups, who don’t support birth control, have been leading the charge against the new rules. However, several of the most prominent Catholic hospitals already provide the coverage to their employees.

“We can appreciate the efforts of the White House to quiet the furor over the President’s HHS mandate that would violate the religious freedom of millions of Catholics and other American citizens,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski said. “However it is still not clear whether the proposed ‘compromise’ offered today is acceptable tot he bishops and other Catholic leaders.”

The social issue has attracted the attention of Senator Marco Rubio who has filed legislation that would allow any business to exempt itself from the coverage provision if they had a religious objection to the law.

Rubio’s bill isn’t likely to make it out of the Democratically-controlled Senate, but he has capitalized on the social issue fight with an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference and through numerous media appearances.

According to a new Fox News poll, Santorum received 23 percent of the vote compared to Romney’s 33 percent.

Newt Gingrich came in third at 22 percent and Ron Paul rounded out the bunch with 15 percent of the vote.

Compared with a mid-January Fox News poll, Romney’s support has dropped 7 percent while Santorum has surged by 8 percent.

Newt Gingrich still enjoyed the most tea party support, 34 percent to Santorum’s 28 percent.

But, overall, roughly 80 percent of GOP primary voters said someone other than Romney can still win the nomination.

However, for Gingrich or Santorum to win the race, they are going to have to increase their fundraising prowess to keep up with Romney’s war chest.

Santorum has run a shoestring campaign, but still made plenty of inroads.

Gingrich’s biggest supporter announced Thursday that he would no longer be giving $5 million chunks to Gingrich’s campaign.

It could be the beginning of the end of the Gingrich campaign, though he has been counted out before and rebounded well.

More than half of Republican primary voters told Fox news that it was still too early for any of the current contenders to drop out.

But, roughly half said they would rather see someone else jump in the race.