Politics

Republican presidential candidates have a chance to win hundreds of convention delegates after voters cast their ballots in Super Tuesday contests. The delegate count wouldn't be enough for any candidate to clinch the nomination, but it would help. Mitt Romney is hoping to return to front-runner status but Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are trying to prevent that.

Morning Edition has four reports on Monday's campaigning leading up to Super Tuesday's 10 primaries and caucuses.

NPR's Don Gonyea was traveling with former Senator Rick Santorum in Ohio.

While Republican candidates continue to slug it out for their party's White House nomination, President Obama is getting a head start on the general election.

Obama's grassroots campaign is already hard at work with volunteers hosting house parties and staffing phone banks to find and mobilize the president's supporters. The campaign has opened five offices in Virginia, and that's not counting the basement of Sue Langley's house in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Vienna, where more than a dozen volunteers assembled this past weekend.

An increasing number of corporations have announced that they will no longer advertise on the show of the undisputed king of political radio talk, Rush Limbaugh, in the wake of caustic and sexually charged comments he made about a Georgetown Law student.

An apology over the weekend failed to quell the controversy, as both corporations and conservative commentators denounced Limbaugh's latest provocative remarks. It is far from his first such episode. Part of Limbaugh's appeal involves getting listeners to tune in to hear just what shibboleth-bursting thing he'll say next.

It's Super Tuesday for the Republican presidential contenders, and 10 states are holding primaries and caucuses.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney hopes he can firm up his front-runner status — a status that, an NPR analysis shows, has so far involved his campaign and a pro-Romney superPAC burying the opposition with negative messages.