Volunteers supporting Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney vie for attention at the Conservative Political Action Conference …

Rick Santorum's popularity among Republican voters has blown up nationally in recent weeks, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press that finds him in a statistical tie with Mitt Romney in the race for the White House.

Santorum leads Romney 30 percent to 28 percent among Republicans and voters that lean Republican, according to the poll conducted Feb. 8-12. The survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points, shows that support for Santorum has more than doubled among the group since the poll was last taken in January.

With 10 states set to vote on March 6, after primaries in Arizona and Michigan on Feb. 28th and caucuses in Washington on March 3, the focus of the race has transitioned from state-by-state contests to a nationwide contest, which makes national polling more relevant than it was earlier.

(Cat Fancy)

The satirical Twitter account purporting to be the "official" feed of Cat Fancy magazine has been taken offline after a Yahoo News report made the editor of the real magazine aware of its existence. And it appears that Cat Fancy, which as recently as last week did not have an official Twitter feed, has now created one of its own.

The fake account, @Cat_Fancy, was listed as "suspended" by Twitter sometime over the weekend, and its sinister-sounding tweets about cats came to a halt; @CatFancy, an account claiming to be the "official Twitter page of CAT FANCY magazine," was launched on Feb. 10.

It's not clear why the account was taken offline. Carey O'Donnell, one of the operators of the suspended feed, did not immediately return an email seeking comment, nor did Susan Logan, editor of the Irvine, Calif.-based publication.

But last week, Logan hinted that the magazine would seek to protect its brand against the faux feed.

"We appreciate the creativity people use in harnessing Twitter for satire and humor," Logan wrote in an email to Yahoo News. "But we cannot condone hijacking our trademark and undermining the trust our readers have in us for good, solid advice." Via her own Twitter account, Logan noted that the fake feed publishes "some disturbing things, often against cats."

Meanwhile, at least one of the satirical Cat Fancy account's 4,300-plus followers lashed out after learning of its apparent demise.

Copies of the White House budget are delivered to the House Monday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)On Monday morning, President Obama sent to Congress his federal budget for fiscal year 2013, a non-binding blue print of the White House's spending priorities that calls for raising taxes on the wealthy, cutting spending in certain areas of government and increasing the budgets of infrastructure projects and job training programs.

If implemented, the White House says that the plan would decrease the federal deficit by $4 trillion within the next decade, although it leaves the federal government with a budget shortfall of $901 billion by the end of fiscal year 2013. Obama introduced his budget in a speech at the Northern Virginia Community College near Washington, D.C.

"The main idea in the budget is this: At a time when our economy is growing and creating jobs at a faster clip, we've got to do everything in our power to keep this recovery on track," Obama said. "Part of our job is to bring down our deficit, and if Congress adopts this budget, then along with the cuts that we' already made, we'll be able to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion by 2022."

"The last thing we need is for Washington to stand in the way of America's comeback," he went on to say, calling on Congress to extend a payroll tax cut, which expires at the end of this month, "without drama, without delay."

The Budget Control Act, passed by Congress last August to end the damaging stand-off over the debt ceiling, cut discretionary spending by $900 billion over the next decade. That all but forced the White House to make major cuts to discretionary spending across the board -- including agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration -- in today's budget proposal.

The plan unveiled Monday also includes $360 billion in cuts to federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Most of those cuts come from reduced payments to providers, including drug companies. By contrast, a plan put forward last year by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), and embraced by much of his party, calls for a broader restructuring of Medicare; many analysts say cuts in the Ryan plan would fall more heavily on future beneficiaries.

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

DENVER—Mitt Romney has long campaigned as the economy's Mr. Fix-It, the man who would "restore America back to its greatness," as he frequently says. Emotion is something he has rarely talked about, much less exhibited on the campaign trail.

He is not a candidate who lingers with voters. His interactions along the rope line or at meet-and-greets are usually succinct. At stops throughout the early primary states, Romney spent a lot of time shaking hands, signing autographs and posing for photos—but not much time actually talking to people.

At a stop in Charleston, S.C., last month, a man approached Romney and told him he lost his job and was planning to vote for him in hopes that he could get the country back on track. "Thank you," Romney replied. He didn't press the man on details and instead kept shaking hands as he moved down the line.

But as he has struggled to hang on to the mantle of the frontrunner in the Republican presidential race, Romney has tweaked his stump speech in subtle ways to counter the perception that he's too robotic and stiff—or maybe even too rich to care about average people. He has begun diverting from his usual stump speech, which was heavy on his explanations of his love and faith in America, to talk about the people he has met during his second presidential run.

"I've had the opportunity over the last several months to go across the country and meet people in this great land of ours, and these have been challenging times," Romney said at a stop in Colorado Springs. "I was getting my hair cut in a place in New Hampshire, and the barber, in his seventies, had expected to retire but couldn't afford to."

In Elko, Nev., Romney spoke of how "heartsick" he was to have recently met a group of seniors "who thought they would retire but are working minimum wage jobs to keep food on the table."

In Reno, Romney spoke of a couple he met who "used to think about where they were going to send their kid to college," adding, "Now they are wondering if they can put food on the table until their next paycheck comes in."

In Las Vegas, he spoke of "college kids" who pressed him on whether there will be jobs when they graduate. And at a stop just outside Denver, Romney spoke of a married couple he met who learned they were pregnant with their second child on the day they lost their home to foreclosure.

Romney never names the people he talks about, but he uses them as a way to talk about what he believes is the failure of President Obama's time in the White House.

"These have been a tough three years," Romney says at virtually every stop. "This president has failed the American people."

There have been rare public moments where Romney has had intimate encounters with voters. At a stop in Sumter, S.C., last month, an ABC News reporter witnessed Romney reach into his wallet and hand an unemployed woman cash as he shook hands with voters after a rally.

Romney's aides and supporters say that, behind closed doors, he is far more at ease than his persona on the stump suggests. They say he is someone who has a big heart—and is nothing like the rich, aloof man that his rivals have tried to define him as.

At a stop in Centennial, Colo., a supporter introduced Romney by telling a story of how the candidate rescued the 14-year-old daughter of a coworker at Bain Capital—a story that was mentioned repeatedly in 2008 but has been rarely mentioned during this campaign, four years later.

And Romney briefly mentioned his time as a Mormon lay pastor during a campaign stop last week in Atlanta—a subject he has mentioned only fleetingly during this campaign. He used the moment to talk about his experience in dealing with people who were struggling.

"In my church, we don't have a professional ministry, and so people are asked to serve as the minister, or the pastor of their congregation from time to time, and I had that privilege for, I think, over 10 years," Romney said, the Washington Post reported. "And in that capacity, I had the chance to work with people who had lost their jobs, in some cases, or were facing other financial distress, losing their homes. And I found that those circumstances were not just about money or numbers. They were about lives, and they were about emotions."

Jeremy Lin has been a starting point guard in the NBA for less than a week now. But the 23-year-old Harvard graduate's meteoric rise from basketball's D-league obscurity to unlikely New York Knicks star has taken the sports media world by storm, inspiring a tidal wave of puns along the way.

Just look at some of the headlines published by New York tabloids:

LIN-CREDIBLE KNICKS DO NUMBER ON JAZZ
-- New York Post, Feb. 8

LIN YOUR FACE!
-- New York Post, Feb. 9

LINNING STREAK
-- New York Post, Feb. 9

THE MIGHTY LIN
-- Daily News, Feb. 10

MAY THE BEST MAN LIN
-- New York Post, Feb. 10

LINCREDIBLE!
-- New York Post, Feb. 11

COMEBACK LIN!
-- Daily News, Feb. 12

JEREMY WIN!
-- New York Post, Feb. 12

LIN & BEAR IT!
-- New York Post, Feb. 13

LINSTANT REPLAY
-- Daily News, Feb. 13

JEL-LIN
-- New York Post, Feb. 13

ESPN, which broadcast Lin's 38-point breakout performance over Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night, has played a role in fanning the Lin flames:

Lin-citement
-- ESPN.com, Feb. 11

Jeremy Spoke In MSG Today
-- ESPN.com, Feb. 11

Where Linsanity goes from here
-- ESPN.com, Feb. 11

The Lin-sanity continues
-- ESPN.com, Feb. 12

TWC subscribers miss Linsanity
-- ESPN.com, Feb. 12

Lin As In Win
-- ESPN, Feb. 12

But there's more:

Romney visits a caucus site in Maine Saturday (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

Mitt Romney scored a narrow victory over Ron Paul in Maine's Republican presidential caucuses Saturday, avoiding an embarrassing setback in his bid for the GOP nomination. Romney received 39 percent of the vote to Paul's 36 percent.

Rick Santorum finished third, with 18 percent, and Newt Gingrich finished fourth, with 6 percent.

Maine's 24 delegates are not allocated by the results of the caucuses, but Romney and Paul stepped up their efforts to win the state in recent days, trying to score an important symbolic victory. For Romney, who won the state easily--with 52 percent of the vote--in 2008, a win in Maine could help him rebound from Tuesday's three-state loss to Rick Santorum.

Turnout was low: Only 2,290 people voted for Romney, 1,996 voted for Paul, 989 voted for Santorum, and 349 voted for Gingrich.

For Paul, the state was a chance to prove he could actually win a statewide contest during the 2012 campaign, after disappointing finishes in Iowa and Nevada—two states where, along with Maine, Paul dedicated lots of time, money and effort.

The race was long a showdown between Romney and Paul, as Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich chose not to compete in the state. Romney advisers initially regarded Maine as an easy victory and indicated their candidate wouldn't spend much time in the state.

But Romney made a last-minute visit to the state on Friday, and on Saturday he visited two caucus sites—something he has rarely done on Election Day in other states.

The race now shifts to two key states that are considered a must-win by the Romney campaign: Arizona and Michigan, which will hold primaries on Feb. 28.

Mitt Romney addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP))

Mitt Romney won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Saturday with 38 percent of the vote, 7 points ahead of Rick Santorum, who placed second.

The straw poll is essentially an in-house election for the Republican Party's most conservative activists, the several thousand people who attended CPAC. It is not a scientific survey--its results cannot be extrapolated to national public opinion, even among the subset of conservatives.

Since the conference began holding the straw poll in 1976, CPAC attendees have chosen only two candidates who would later become the Republican presidential nominee: Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and George W. Bush in 2000.

But the win is still a much-needed sign of strength among conservatives for Romney, who has struggled to gain the support of his party's base.

Newt Gingrich came in third with 15 percent, followed by Ron Paul, who received 12 percent.

WASHINGTON — We have reached the dazed and confused phase of the 2012 campaign: Frontrunner Mitt Romney is dazed and anyone who tries to handicap the GOP race from here on is confused. Against the backdrop of a Republican nomination fight certain to last until the March 6 Super Tuesday primaries — and quite likely well beyond — the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) could not have come at a better time. Friday was the moment for all three remaining plausible GOP nominees (Romney, Rick Santorum and the wobbly Newt Gingrich) to renew their sales pitches at a Washington convention hotel filled with right-wing firebrands ranging in age from college Republicans to septuagenarian spear carriers from the 1964 Barry Goldwater uprising.

Normally, at this stage of the campaign, formal speeches in vast hotel ballrooms have been supplanted by 30-second TV spots and debate performances. But with the GOP race upended by Santorum's three-state sweep last Tuesday, the candidates understood that CPAC provided their last major opportunity to deliver an extended argument before the avalanche of late winter primaries. Much of their language was designed to stir this conservative audience. Santorum, for example, declared, "We should recognize, as conservatives and Tea Party folks, that we are not just wings of the Republican Party. We are the Republican Party." (Like all good political rhetoric, the Santorum line was inadvertently borrowed: During the run-up to the 2004 primaries, Howard Dean inspired liberals by claiming to represent "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.")

Beyond the political hucksterism that shaped the TV clips and morning-after newspaper headlines, the three candidates provided glimpses of strikingly different approaches to the presidency. These fleeting pictures of a Republican in the Oval Office in 2013 consisted of more than just boilerplate pledges to rescind Barack Obama's health-care reforms and quixotic promises like Romney's "I will finally balance the American budget." Even if they agree on the broad strokes of issues positions, Santorum, Romney and Gingrich offer the Republicans a choice of conservative leadership styles. And the CPAC speeches underscored the stakes for GOP voters as the topsy-turvy nomination fight moves from a handful of early states to a national canvas.

Rick Santorum: The jobs conservative

As a full-throated social conservative, the former Pennsylvania senator was as much in his element at CPAC as George Soros is at Davos. Unlike Romney (who supported abortion rights until — shazam! — he didn't) or Gingrich (who aspires to be the only twice-divorced president in history), Santorum does not have to worry about airbrushing his image with conservatives. "We know each other," Santorum said at the beginning of a key passage in his address to CPAC. "We've worked together in the vineyards. We have taken on the tough battles that confront this country."

These words were a prelude to a job-creation topic rarely publicly discussed in a presidential campaign: Who will be hired for the White House staff, the Cabinet and the sub-Cabinet if Santorum is elected? Most newly elected presidents strive to be inclusive—like Obama choosing Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and keeping Republican holdover Robert Gates at the Pentagon. Ronald Reagan not only tapped primary rival George Bush as his running mate, but he also named Bush's campaign manager James Baker as his first White House chief of staff. Even George W. Bush, far more ideological than his father, selected centrist Colin Powell to be secretary of state.