Appearing on "Power Play with Chris Stirewalt" today Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee, rejected forcefully the idea that Mitt Romney - who was derided by fellow Republicans for the better part of six months, during the GOP primaries, as insufficiently conservative - will be a drag on the Tea Party freshmen and other right-wing House members seeking re-election this fall.

Still, Sessions acknowledged that his rank and file are "slightly different on some ideas" from Romney.

"Let's be truthful about this," Sessions told me. "Every single Republican cannot wait to be seen with Mitt Romney onstage, talking about how we will go about changing not just the culture in Washington but reviving the free enterprise system back home. And Mitt Romney is a free enterprise champion. There's not one person in this country that from their front porch can't see Greece today. They understand what four years of this president, four years of Nancy Pelosi -- what she did, and of taxing and spending - has crippled this country. (read more)

A senior Obama-Biden campaign official tells Fox News no serious consideration is being given to relocating the Democratic National Convention out of North Carolina. "It's not logistically possible," the source said, adding that it's also not under serious consideration.

The reasons why are obvious: The siting of the convention there was meant to help the Obama-Biden campaign retain North Carolina (and Virginia) in the president's column. Critical to doing that is organization in those states, and the convention itself, as a gathering, is a critical organizing tool.

This was amply demonstrated, and perhaps for the first time, at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado four years ago, where all entrants to INVESCO Field had to register with the campaign. Campaign officials have estimated that of the roughly 80,000 attendees, some 25,000 or so were party officers or members of the media, leaving the remainder - roughly 50 to 60,000 people - as individuals who engaged with the campaign that day.

Thus Obama-Biden 2012 has no intention of pulling the DNC out of North Carolina this year.

Pledging to run a "national campaign" and denying he faces a do-or-die "Alamo" moment in Texas -- whose April 3 primary will award 155 delegates -- Newt Gingrich accused Rick Santorum of being a "Big Labor Republican" who has attacked the Tea Party and amassed a voting record conservatives will find "dubious."

In an impromptu interview at the Fox News Washington bureau, the former House speaker claimed Santorum's clean sweep of this week's nominating contests in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri shows that the Republican presidential primary is a "wide open race" he can still win. Asked if Santorum's ascendancy deprives Gingrich's own candidacy of oxygen, Gingrich maintained that he appeals to a wider and deeper constituency in the GOP electorate.

"Among Tea Party members, I have a much stronger following than Rick does. And they understand that it's principled and that I am supportive of the Tea Parties; I am not attacking them, as he did," Gingrich said.  (read more)

"Newt Gingrich," said a campaign statement issued late Wednesday afternoon, "welcomes scrutiny of his record in public office and as a small businessman."

Yet until now - amid persistent questions about the more than $1.5 million that Gingrich earned as a consultant to embattled mortgage giant Freddie Mac, over eight years' time - relatively little has been disclosed about what the campaign calls "the various small businesses" the GOP presidential candidate has started since resigning as House Speaker.

A campaign aide tells Fox News that since January 1999, Gingrich has started a total of four companies, three of which were subsumed under a larger outfit called Gingrich Holdings. Those three companies were the Gingrich Group - the consulting firm whose clients included Freddie Mac, IBM, Microsoft and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among others - Gingrich Communications, and Gingrich Productions. Those last two firms were designed to absorb the income from the former speaker's books, documentaries, and lecture tours. The most recent start-up was Gingrich Productions, which the campaign identified as having been incorporated in 2007. (read more)

Stung by criticism that his signature "9-9-9" economic plan would saddle America's poorest citizens with a disproportionate share of the country's tax burden, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain announced some new features to the plan, even as he insisted they have been included in his campaign literature all along.

Speaking at a sparsely attended outdoor event, Cain stood before the stately Michigan Central Station in downtown Detroit, where the unemployment levels are among the highest in the country, to announce his proposal to create "opportunity zones" in America's inner cities. His announcement came just days after the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington released a study of the "9-9-9" plan that concluded the plan would increase taxes by more than 900 percent on U.S. households earning between $10,000 and $20,000 annually.

Accusing his rivals and critics of having never read his plan all the way through, Cain then used language about the plan never heard before - and sure to raise questions about whether his economic proposals now lack the simplicity that once appeared their central virtue. (read more)

Romney campaign spokeswoman Gail Gitcho has provided FOX News with the following response to David Axelrod's comment on "ABC This Week" Sunday:

"First, President Obama was going to run on his record. He said if he didn't turn around the economy in three years, he would be a one term president. When that didn't work, their strategy was to tie Mitt Romney to past policies. Then it was "kill Mitt" and the strategy of personal destruction. Now, they have signaled their new strategy is to go after Wall Street reform. What next? No matter what they come up with, President Obama can't hide from the fact that his record on job creation has been abysmal. More middle class workers have lost their job under President Obama than in any time in modern history - and no amount of spin can cover up that truth."

Axelrod's comment on "ABC This Week":

"I don't think any American is impressed when they see Governor Romney and all the Republican candidates say the first thing they'd do is roll back Wall Street reforms and go back to where we were before the crisis and let Wall Street write its own rules. I think that will be an issue in this campaign."

National Urban League President Marc Morial tells Fox News that President Obama's jobs plan "could be more robust," and that while he and the minority community consider the plan "a good effort," they would like to see it "expanded." "The best deficit reduction plan is a jobs plan," Morial said.

Morial's comments came in the course of an interview about the latest poverty statistics, released by the U.S. Census Bureau Tuesday morning. The data showed that 15.1 percent of Americans - roughly 42.6 million - are now impoverished. The total number reflects the highest ever seen since poverty figures were first published in 152, while the percentage of Americans in poverty reflects the highest rate since 1983.

Asked about a July Washington Post/ABC News survey that found that the number of African-Americans who believe the president's actions have helped the economy dropped by about twenty points over seven months this year, Morial said: "There is no doubt that what people reflect in that poll is how they feel about themselves, and how they feel about objective conditions."

"And I do think the president must pay attention, and I think he is paying attention to those polling numbers, because there's a great deal of despair out there, a great deal of pain, a great deal of human misery, because this recession has not only been deep; indeed, it has been long..." Morial said. (read more)

WASHINGTON -- Most voters don't really pay attention to campaigns and candidates until a week or two before Election Day - and most Americans, in like fashion, are only now starting to tune into the debt ceiling debate.

HOW MUCH WOULD A $2.4 TRILLION DEBT CEILING INCREASE COST YOU? CLICK HERE TO SEE WITH OUR TAXPAYER CALCULATOR.

A Pew Research Center poll, conducted with The Washington Post last week, found Americans roughly split between those who view the raising of the debt ceiling with greater concern, and those more alarmed by a failure to increase it. As well, the number of Americans worried about the prospect of Uncle Sam defaulting on his bills grew by 7 percent over the last two months.

The question of whether to add to America's $14.2 trillion borrowing authority is growing more intense, with President Obama now leading negotiations with congressional Republicans that stalled under the supervision of Vice President Biden, as an Aug. 2 deadline nears. On that date, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said, the federal government will likely exceed its statutory borrowing limit. (read more)

Leading Republican politicians warned fiscally conservative and religiously devout voters Friday not to impose "purity" tests on candidates seeking the party's 2012 presidential nomination.

"In politics, purity is the enemy of victory," Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told an audience of approximately 400 attendees at the first annual Faith and Freedom Coalition conference at the Renaissance Downtown Hotel in Washington. "We can't expect our [presidential] candidate to be pure. Winning is about unity, not purity."

Barbour's friendly but stern admonition carries weight because even though he opted, after much deliberation, not to run for the presidency, he is still widely regarded as one of the party's savviest strategists and most prodigious fundraisers. He spoke as the GOP presidential field continues to settle, with aspirants each week announcing either their intention to join the contest to unseat President Obama, or to watch it from the sidelines or seek lower office.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, obliquely addressing the Tea Party voters who have sometimes exalted their own candidates over those selected by the GOP establishment, echoed Barbour's call to unity. "The Republican Party is not in competition with the conservative movement," Priebus said with an almost plaintive tone. "The Republican Party is part of the conservative movement." (read more)

When the motorcade of Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo pulled up in the horseshoe driveway at State Department's C Street entrance this morning, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was there to greet him. She cheerfully made small talk about the pleasant weather, then guided the septuagenarian Dai to the mark where the two paused to shake hands for photographers.

The scene emphasized the importance of the bi-lateral relationship between the two countries, which collectively account for one-third of the world's gross domestic product - but also the strong degree of stage management present in this, the third round of the "Strategic and Economic Dialogue" that the U.S. and China introduced in 2009.

Originally intended as a new forum in which the nations' top diplomats and financial officials could engage each other, the S&ED was expanded this year, for the first time, to include senior military leaders from both sides. (read more)