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January 04, 2012 | | FIGHTER On message to the end, Michele Bachmann left the Republican presidential race Wednesday with a bracing attack on President Obama's healthcare law, which she said was the inspiration for her campaign. "I didn't tell you what the polls said you wanted to hear," Bachmann told an audience in Iowa. She challenged the remaining candidates to bring down Obama's policies that are "based on socialism" and "destructive to the very foundation of the Republic." BACK FOR MORE Rick Perry doesn’t think he’s taken enough of a beating yet: the Texas governor tweeted Wednesday that he's headed to South Carolina to continue his long-shot presidential campaign. “And the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State ... Here we come South Carolina,” Perry tweeted. A Republican official confirmed that Perry isn’t dropping out of the race. After finishing in fifth place at the Iowa caucuses, Perry said in his concession speech that he was going back to Texas to “assess” his campaign. Perry added that he would look to see if there’s a “path forward” for himself in the race, leading many to speculate that we had seen the last of the gaffe-prone candidate. NEXT UP After trailing Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses by just eight votes, here’s some good news to start Rick Santorum’s day: he is gaining traction in New Hampshire. According to a CNN/ORC International poll of 554 likely Republican voters in New Hampshire, Santorum’s support has doubled from 5 percent to 10 percent. Mitt Romney’s numbers remained unchanged at 47 percent. Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, who came in fourth in Iowa, said he would go after Romney as they head to the Granite State, where the nation’s first primary will take place next Tuesday. Gingrich kicked off his New Hampshire blitz with a full-page ad in the Manchester Union Leader, the newspaper that endorsed him in November. HARDBALL Iowa must have put some spring back in his step: President Obama started Wednesday morning by making a recess appointment, in defiance of Republican warnings, to fill the top leadership position in the federal government's new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Taking the seat is Richard Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio whom Republicans have blocked from being nominated to the position. The new agency will enact and enforce new financial regulations passed by Congress to curb predatory lending and establish greater accountability for financial institutions. Diplomacy As the Muslim Brotherhood looks like it may win a majority in Egypt's Parliament, the Obama administration has begun to make diplomatic overtures, including through recent high-level meetings. The shift in policy is partly an acknowledgment of the Brotherhood's new political power and partly the result of frustration with Egypt's military rulers, who have continued to use deadly force against protesters as they seek to hold on to power. But the U.S. isn't done working with Egypt's military yet, and hasn't threatened to take away the $1.3 billion in military aid it gives Egypt each year. | | 
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