The influence of independent expenditure groups like PACs and SuperPACs has become a major factor in this year’s presidential election. Consequently, the news that President Obama has decided to encourage donations to the Priorities USA Action SuperPAC is dominating political news today, with handwringing on the left and the right about the President’s prior vocal opposition to outside groups. Philosophically, he’s just taking a page from Ronald Reagan‘s book.

On Monday morning’s Fox and Friends, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney let out another one of those “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake!” bursts of honesty which, like a burlesque revue at a leper colony, are revealing, but not in a good way. Asked if his father’s Mexican birthplace is helping him with Florida’s Hispanic community, Romney replied “You know, I wish I could claim that I’m Hispanic…”

There has been a lot of high-minded chatter among the political media elite deriding the proliferation of presidential debates this election cycle. As CNN prepares to air the 19th Republican Primary debate tonight, Starting Point anchor Soledad O’Brien wondered if this GOP reality show is a good thing. Roland Martin argued that the debates have been revealing, noting “If we didn’t have 19 debates, trust me, Rick Perry would still be in this race.”

A viral video featuring six Chinese soldiers playing “pass the grenade” is burning up the YouTubes, mainly because the grenade they’re passing around is, according to the video’s title, a live one. The soldiers pass some kind of smoking object around, then toss it into a pit, and hit the deck as something explodes. I don’t know why they’re doing it, but their routine is a near-perfect metaphor for the 2012 presidential election.

In recent days, the heat has been turned up on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, with pressure coming from rivals, allies, and revelations about his Cayman Islands investments. At Thursday night’s South Carolina Republican debate, Romney was put on the spot to release his tax returns before April, and when he balked, the crowd reacted disapprovingly.

Today is a big news day in Republican presidential politics. With the South Carolina primary just days away, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, still reeling from attacks on his record at Bain Capital, negative buzz surrounding his yet-to-be-revealed tax returns, now has to deal with an ABC News Nightline report on his financial holdings in the Cayman Islands, a notorious tax haven.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s presidential campaign has released a new web ad that features radio clips of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee defending Romney against the recent barrage of attacks on Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. Ironically, Huckabee was also featured in an anti-Romney SuperPAC ad last month that reminded voters of Romney’s propensity to go negative early, like he did against Huckabee in 2008.

During his victory speech in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney stuck to the script for the most part, rarely straying from the “prepared remarks” released by the campaign as the speech began. There was only one substantial change: Romney added an accusation that President Obama “wants to turn America into a European-style social welfare state,” whereas in the prepared remarks, the line read “entitlement society.”

Following wins in the first two Republican primary contests, the Romney campaign announced some more good news Wednesday. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney raised $24 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, finishing with a $56 million total for the year. That’s a big improvement over Q3, when his $14 million haul was eclipsed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry‘s $17 million take. The bad news: the Obama campaign is expected to release a Q4 total north of $60 million.

At a campaign event in New Hampshire Sunday, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney made another ill-considered attempt to relate to the common man, telling the crowd that “I know what it’s like to worry whether you’re going to get fired. There were a couple of times I wondered if I was going to get a pink slip.”

The remark has drawn fire from many, but an oppo memo from Priorities USA Action‘s Bill Burton really brings the absurdity of Mitt’s alleged anxiety into stark relief.

On the heels of her distant sixth-place finish in the Iowa Caucuses, and the announcement that she had canceled a planned visit to South Carolina, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann held a press conference Wednesday morning to announce that she is ending her presidential campaign. With the likely end of Rick Perry‘s run, Bachmann’s move presents an opportunity for surging Rick Santorum to consolidate the social conservative vote.

Things got a little bit heated during MSNBC’s Iowa Caucus coverage Tuesday night when The Ed Show host Ed Schultz and The Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell sparred over surging candidate Rick Santorum‘s tax repatriation plan, and whether it constitutes a “manufacturing plan.”

The exchange was heated, but brief, as co-anchor Rachel Maddow comically saved the day with the cheery declatarion, “Look! It’s Rick Perry!”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has a way of making statements about class that clang like a robot mosh pit, having previously declared himself “unemployed,” and challenged rival Rick Perry to a casual $10,000 bet onstage at a debate. On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, he made his most bewildering statement yet, telling Tom Brokaw “Somebody that’s fallen from the middle class into poverty, in my opinion, is still middle class.”

Bill O’Reilly was back after his vacation for the first program of the year, and he had some unfinished business to tend to with Rick Santorum. The latter attacked O’Reilly on the radio today, suggesting that he was banned from the Factor. O’Reilly responded by reminding Santorum that he wasn’t exactly a star in the polls before this week but, now that he was, he was more than welcome to appear on the program on Wednesday.

Surging presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is under fire for a remark at a campaign event Sunday in Sioux City, Iowa, where he apparently brought up the plight of black people completely out of the blue. Or did he?

According to reports, Santorum said ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”

Filling in as host of The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday night, Up With Chris Hayes star Chris Hayes threw another log on the Newt Gingrich serial hypocrisy fire, tying the candidate’s failure to get on the Virginia Republican primary ballot to a 2009 Gingrich op-ed that excoriated the “enablers” of ACORN‘s “long history of engaging in voter fraud.”

Viewers of Thursday night’s opening Ed Show segment might have done a double-take as Ed Schultz introduced a segment on surging GOP hopeful Rick Santorum when it looked like the host showed up in some b-roll of a Santorum town hall meeting. But sure enough, Ed was there, and conducted a surprising interview with the socially conservative former Senator that had Schultz wondering if Santorum could be a threat to win Iowa.

There was a lot to unpack in Wolf Blitzer‘s interview with GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich, but one thing that stood out was a panel discussion that Blitzer conducted following a clip of Gingrich’s attack on Rep. Ron Paul over his newsletters, among other things. The ostensibly objective Blitzer said he thought “it took guts” for Gingrich to come out against Paul so strongly, David Frum accused Paul of racism, and panelist Jonathan Prince said Paul was “racist by design.”

Unlikely GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich has tried to explain away the fact that he practically invented the health insurance mandate as a practical response to the evil Hillary Clinton push for universal health care in the early 90s, but The Wall Street Journal has uncovered a 2006 newsletter that vaporizes that claim. The April 2006 edition of “Newt Notes,” which the Gingrich campaign says their candidate didn’t write, contains high praise for mandated health insurance.

Since breaking into the upper atmosphere of the Republican presidential field, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has waged a campaign against negative campaigning that many see as the necessary act of a broke candidate. Tuesday morning, the political media is pointing to a new opposition memo as evidence that the Gingrich campaign has abandoned its no-attack pledge. Ironically, the “attack” underscores why Mitt Romney is the better candidate to face President Obama in the general election.

After a string of qualified “successes” in the game of legislative chicken, congressional Republicans may have finally met their Dead Man’s Curve. With time running out on the payroll tax cut extension that will affect 160 million Americans, Republicans in the House rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise to extend the payroll tax cut for two months in transparently cynical fashion. Now, the conservative Wall Street Journal is calling their strategy a “fiasco,” and questioning the GOP’s chances at taking back the Senate in 2012.

Former Presidential candidate Herman Cain was a guest on Tuesday’s FoxNews.com Live, and was asked by host Julie Banderas — because he “still sounds like a candidate” — if he’d want to resurrect his campaign. Cain reiterated that he was out, but did say he plans on being active through the nomination process.

Hours after Mitt Romney‘s presidential campaign announced her endorsement, former witchcraft-dabbler and losing US Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell appeared on CNN’s American Morning to start working her magic on the beleaguered former Massachusetts Governor’s flagging candidacy. While the money quote is that Romney “has been consistent since he changed his mind,” O’Donnell goes on to “help” Romney by telling her fellow Tea Partiers it’s okay to “get behind Michele Bachmann, get behind Rick Santorum, Ron Paul instead of Romney.”

In a trick as old as primary politics, former Massachusetts Governor and perennial second-fiddle GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched a positive ad today, featuring praise of his business acumen from rival (and current frontrunner) former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. What makes this particular ad somewhat ironic is that it seems to be a direct response to an eviscerating attack from Gingrich on the subject of…Mitt Romney’s business acumen. It’s also noteworthy for what it doesn’t include: any facts to refute that attack.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is taking the momentum of his endorsement by Christine O’Donnell and running with it, following it up with the release of a stale attack ad that highlights one of Newt Gingrich‘s momentary brushes with sane policy, in this case his support for legislation to fight global climate change. Never mind that Gingrich has since refudiated his Pelosi playdate, doesn’t Mitt realize that Ron Paul already made this ad, and made it about 11 times better?