In the aftermath of Rick Santorum’s clean sweep of Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, Mitt Romney is still, in fact, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. But the lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy among conservatives foreshadows a potentially ugly road ahead to the party’s convention in Tampa and general-election problems if he becomes the nominee.

Rick Santorum and his supporters moved quickly Wednesday to raise money and redirect their efforts after a surprising Tuesday sweep of three contests again put the former senator from Pennsylvania in position to contend for the Republican nomination.

Big donors are back at the Republican National Committee.

The party raised nearly three times as much from rich donors in 2011 than during the entire midterm election cycle. The money from wealthy supporters has helped the RNC recover from its dire financial position of last year, when the party’s bank accounts were in their worst shape in more than three decades.

One unintended consequence of the improving economy: The culture war is back.

Last night, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum proved that social issues can still pack a punch.

For months, the Republican presidential candidates have hammered away on the economy — and only the economy — as they crisscrossed the campaign trail. But over the past few days, longtime social issues -- contraception, abortion and gay marriage -- have taken the stage in the campaign.

The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Listen close after a Mitt Romney rally, and you’ll hear a soundtrack with a very un-Romney-like tone.

Romney’s main theme song for this campaign is a bland, upbeat anthem: “Born Free,” by Kid Rock.

But, after his speeches, Romney plays music with an angrier edge.

Romney hits Gingrich in Ohio, a bunch of Florida lawmakers are changing races, Americans for Prosperity is helping Scott Walker and Ron Paul has a plan.

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Rick Santorum’s trio of victories in Tuesday’s contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri virtually assures that the Republican presidential race will, on some level, be a delegate race.

And if that delegate race drags on for a while, it could very well pit different regions of the country against one another.

In his Missouri victory speech Tuesday night, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum devoted a substantial chunk of his remarks to the Obama administration’s decision to mandate birth control coverage with very limited exceptions for Catholic employers.

ATLANTA, Ga. – Mitt Romney took the fight to Newt Gingrich’s home turf Wednesday afternoon.

One day after he suffered a surprising defeat in a trio of states, the former Massachusetts governor and GOP front-runner split his campaign-trail attacks evenly between Gingrich and Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who won Tuesday’s contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.

ATLANTA, Ga. – Oops.

Mitt Romney made a minor slip-up at a campaign event here Wednesday afternoon when he mixed up the name of a pipeline project favored by Republicans and the name of the Obama abminsitration-backed solar firm that the GOP argues has become symbolic of the White House’s failed policies.

By the time Rick Santorum was declared the second-place finisher in the Iowa caucuses, you could have seen momentum had been building around him by the level of Twitter conversation.

The Fix’s Chris Cillizza wrote the day after the caucuses (which Santorum was later declared to have won):

A scaled-back ethics bill headed toward likely passage in the House on Thursday despite complaints from senators that Republican leaders had jettisoned several key provisions that won overwhelming Senate support last week.

Seeking to accentuate a political vulnerability for President Obama, Republican lawmakers on Wednesday intensified pressure on the White House over a controversial new health-care rule that critics say violates religious liberty — vowing to press for legislation to repeal it unless the administration relents.

The budget coming Monday from the Obama administration will send the NASA division that launches rovers to Mars and probes to Jupiter crashing back to Earth.

Scientists briefed on the proposed budget said that the president’s plan drops funding for planetary science at NASA from $1.5 billion this year to $1.2 billion next year, with further cuts continuing through 2017.

Five months after Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted in a CIA drone strike, a Democratic senator is lambasting the Obama administration for not providing Congress with the legal basis for the killing of the U.S. citizen.

A Congressional Budget Office report issued last week has become Exhibit A in Republicans’ efforts to extend a freeze on federal pay rates and limit retiree benefits.

The main take-away from the report: “Overall, the federal government paid 16 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector, after accounting for certain observable characteristics of workers.”

A senator closely tracking the fate of the U.S. Postal Service is asking the Postal Regulatory Commission to turn over information on the agency’s official travel schedule in recent years, following a Washington Post investigation into trips by its top commissioner.

Gabrielle Giffords has resigned from Congress, but her impact goes on.

The former Democratic lawmaker from Arizona, who is recovering from wounds suffered in the Tucson shooting spree last year, will join President Obama on Friday when he signs into law the last bill she sponsored in Congress.

Is it okay that congressional earmarks are sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers properties?

In 2011, 33 members of Congress sent more than $300 million toward such projects, according to a recent Washington Post investigation.

Little Rock, Ark. – Geena Davis admits she quickly becomes obsessed.

The last time Davis took up a new sport, for instance, she wound up vying for a spot on the US Olympic archery team and ranked as the nation’s 13th archer.

With his white hair and decidedly senatorial demeanor, no one would mistake Sen. Richard Lugar for a rock star.

But the Indiana Republican apparently enjoys a stature normally reserved for chart-toppers in Ukraine, where he is, as they say, huge.

In January 2007, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) became chairman of a congressional subcommittee that gave him the power to secure millions in federal funds to environmental projects in his district.

Six months later, the congressman requested millions of dollars to clean up Puget Sound — a vital but polluted system of waterways in his home state of Washington, according to White House records.

Over the past decade, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) has directed more than $100 million in federal earmarks to transform Tuscaloosa’s core into a place that local officials say benefits everyone who lives, works and plays in the area.