Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar has been preparing for an intra-party challenge since he was first elected, but recently, questions have popped up about his residency and commitment to Indiana.

Asked if Lugar lived in a hotel when he returned to Indiana, Lugar chief of staff Mark Helmke said, "That's correct."

Lugar owns a farm in the Hoosier State that he's been tending for decades. His siblings own parts of the farm, but he still works on it once a month with his son, even though he doesn't live there.

As for the living conditions on the farm, Helmke joked, "The place is pretty rustic."

Asked how Lugar's team would respond if challenged about his residency, Helmke shot back, "We'll be happy to talk about the farm."

"It's not an issue. They can try to make it an issue. We'll be happy to talk about the farm and what it means to him," Helmke said.

Lugar is awaiting a tough primary challenge from state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, but he has been dogged in defense of his record. In fact, he told the tea party to "get real" earlier this year.

While the tea party might be looking to take down Lugar, those close to Mourdock are more concerned with Lugar's more recent past as a Beltway insider, and Mourdock claims to be a little bit outside the tea party mantle.

New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie rolled into Washington on Wednesday and delivered a blunt warning to members of his own party who were elected to Congress in November largely to reinstate fiscal discipline.

"It's put up or shut up time," Christie said during his address at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "If people who I campaigned for [in 2010] don't stand up and do the right thing, the next time they'll see me in their district is with my arm around their primary opponent."

Christie's speech focused on the balanced budget he ushered into his own state and his now famous battles against public unions. It also included a broad warning to the rest of the country that the time to act on major entitlement reform was now.

Lacing his address with snippets of his trademark humor as well as his brash style, Christie's address was extremely well received by the crowd packed into a smallish ballroom.

"My children's future and your children's future are more important than some political strategy," Christie said. "You're going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security. Whoah, I just said it, and I'm still standing here. I did not vaporize!"

Appearing not to refer to any prepared notes and maintaining a conversational tone, Christie said that the country was on the verge of "missing an historic opportunity" to deal with the fiscal crises that are not "in and of themselves Democratic or Republican issues."

Christie, now entering the second year of his first term as New Jersey's chief executive, lavished praise upon the newly elected Democratic Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo and also singled out California's new Democratic Governor Jerry Brown for immediately setting to work on turning around their states' budget woes.

"Leadership today in America has to be about doing the big things and being courageous," Christie said.

Christie criticized President Obama for focusing on "the candy of American politics" in calling for new investments in electric cars, broadband internet access, and high-speed rail lines in his State of the Union address.

He regaled his audience with stories about being booed by firefighters after rolling back their pensions and telling New Jersey Democrats that he would order a pizza and watch the Mets play on TV rather than pull a political publicity stunt, if they chose to shut down the state's government.

"I think it's time for some impatience in America," Christie said. "Leadership, in my opinion, is not about waiting. I get four years as governor of New Jersey. I don't have time to wait."

After speaking for a little more than a half hour, Christie turned to questions from the press and members of the audience. Surprising no one in the room, the first inquiry came from a reporter who wanted to know whether the governor would reconsider his firm denials of interest in running for president in 2012, in the event that he deemed members of the GOP field unwilling to address the entitlement reforms that he said were necessary to avoid financial ruin.

"Well, that took a long time, didn't it," Christie said with a bemused look on his face. "I threatened to commit suicide, I did. I said, ‘What do I have to do short of suicide to convince people I'm not running?' Apparently I have to actually commit suicide to convince people I'm not running."

Christie added that he did see that there was an opportunity for him to mount a successful presidential campaign but that opportunity alone was not a good enough reason to run and that he simply was not up for it and had made a commitment to his constituents in New Jersey.

"My wife would kill me," he added for good measure.

Nonetheless, after he had concluded his remarks, the conversation among the conservative movers and shakers who had gathered to hear him speak immediately turned to 2012.

"I think he's running," one man in the audience said.

"He needs to run," another replied. "He's got my support."

In a separate conversation, a third member of the audience had this to add to one of his colleagues: "Obama ran because he saw the opportunity. Christie's never going to be hotter than he is right now."

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Steve Israel of New York downplayed the importance of redistricting to his party's efforts to regain House seats next year, but he acknowledged that it will affect his team's strategy in the coming months.

"We will have some recruits announce at the end of March," he said at a press briefing Wednesday. Israel explained, however, that because the redistricting process is fluid, the recruiting process will be fluid.

He noted the redistricting process will have an effect on recruitment and the timing of it, because he doesn't want strong recruits to be announced before redistricting efforts have been completed for fear that it could negatively impact how districts are drawn.

"Republicans will redistrict you to another state," he joked.

Nevertheless, while Israel conceded that red states will pick up 12 congressional districts from blue states after redistricting is completed, he cautioned that not all of those seats will be red. As an example, he cited Texas, which will gain four seats before the 2012 election. Original projections suggested that all four would become GOP seats, but he pointed out that new analysis says both parties likely will add two Texas seats apiece.

Across the board, he said, the shuffle of seats between parties as a result of redistricting will be "pretty close to a wash."

Israel also boasted that the DCCC has already undertaken recruitment efforts in 30 states. Democratic congressmen on the recruitment team have visited 15 states on recruitment trips and made recruitment calls to candidates in another 15 states.

He called the level of involvement by members unprecedented, noting that Democratic House members from across the ideology spectrum have pitched in to help recruit. He added that the DCCC raised $4.4 million in January, its second highest January fundraising haul in the last five years.

"We have gone through the five stages of grief, and we're over it," he said.

Instead, he said, he's working toward winning 25 seats, which Democrats need to get in order to get to 218 seats and reclaim the majority. Specifically, Israel's examining the 61 seats Republicans hold that President Obama carried in the 2008 presidential election. Fourteen of those 61 were also carried by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 election.

"My focus is on 9 million independent voters," Israel said, noting that it won't be as difficult to make gains if the Democrats hold Republicans accountable. He complained that Republicans said if they got back to power they would work on jobs.

"They haven't focused on revitalizing jobs; they've focused on redefining rape," he said.

Israel was candid about Democratic opportunities in a couple of districts. First, he noted that for all of the hype about a competitive special election to replace New York Republican Rep. Chris Lee - who resigned last week after he lied about his age and occupation in a social posting online - the district isn't as competitive as some would suggest.

"I certainly haven't made that assessment," he said about whether it's a "Democratic district." In fact, he noted that Obama carried 47 percent of the district's vote in 2008, and Kerry carried 43 percent of the vote in 2004.

As for the South Dakota at-large seat, which Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin lost to Republican Kristi Noem in November, Israel said he's traded e-mails with Herseth Sandlin about a rematch. He said the DCCC wants her to run again but she hasn't said yet whether she's interested.

Not all former members who were ousted in 2010 are fielding recruitment calls from the DCCC, Israel said, but some of them are welcome back for rematches. He said polling shows that voters are having buyer's remorse in some districts where Republicans beat newer incumbents, and consequently some of them will be pushed to run again.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Paul Lindsay scoffed, "Steve Israel and his giant-sized ego will have a hard time winning anything until they admit why their party was rebuked by voters in the first place. Judging by their continued support for massive government spending, it's obvious that House Democrats have a long way to go before accomplishing their goal of returning Nancy Pelosi to the Speaker's chair."

Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is set to take Washington by storm on Wednesday, as his captivatingly confrontational style and straight-talking charm will be on full display during a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Although Christie has issued more than a few dramatic denials of any interest in exploring a presidential run in 2012, "The Question" continues to follow the first-term governor wherever he goes, and his visit to the nation's capital will surely be no exception.

Washington political observers tend to assume that Christie's espoused lack of interest in mounting a White House run is merely the tactic of yet another savvy politician, but perhaps Christie really is what he says he is: a popular governor who is concerned about the nation's financial health but is perfectly content to remain in New Jersey for the time being.

"I believe him when he closed the door on running, but the problem is we have a tripwire media where everything is covered through the presidential prism, which is unfair," Republican strategist Mike Murphy said. "Why is he giving a national speech? He's got a unique style of dealing with the spending crisis in Trenton that he hopes will catch on with other governors, so I think he is trying to be an evangelist for his style, which has been effective at a time when it's needed. So maybe it's not about him."

In an uncommonly fluid field of GOP presidential contenders, Christie's emphatic rebuffs against the White House chatter have made him all the more attractive in the eyes of his legions of adoring fans nationwide, who greet him with rock star-worthy reverence whenever he speaks out of state.

Christie notched a strong fourth-place finish in last weekend's CPAC presidential straw poll, despite not even attending the conservative gathering in Washington, D.C. But back home, Christie is more than holding his own in a state where politicians are about as popular as the traffic on the Jersey Turnpike.

In a new Farleigh Dickinson University poll released on Wednesday, 51 percent of New Jersey voters approved of the way Christie was handling his job, while only 39 percent disapproved.

"People in the state are very clear that he is focused on the state, and I think that they're surprised by the national attention," Farleigh Dickinson political science professor Peter Woolley said. "I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that he's distracted by the national attention or that he is in any way shortchanging the conversation in New Jersey."

According to a Christie aide, the governor will meet with the New Jersey congressional delegation and attend a trade meeting at the White House, in addition to his AEI speech on Wednesday. The aide said that Christie's Washington trip was scheduled in order for him to share with a wider audience, including governors of other states from both parties, his experiences in dealing with New Jersey's fiscal crisis.

In a preview of his speech that was provided to Politico, Christie indicated that he planned to go into detail over his war with the teachers' union in New Jersey-a topic that always provides fertile ground for him to show off his take-no-prisoners persona.

Seton Hall University political science department chair Matthew Hale said that Republicans in New Jersey are sometimes as infatuated with Christie as many grassroots conservatives in other states often are but added that New Jersey residents who see him more frequently also get a glimpse at both sides of the coin.

"One of the raps that you'll hear against Governor Christie all the time is that he's a bully-that he rams things through and doesn't care or listen to what anyone else says," Hale said. "When that happens the first couple times around, it's kind of refreshing. It's a politician who doesn't care about politics. Over time though, that can wear kind of thin. So the guy who stands up for his convictions and does what he wants can also turn into the guy who beats everybody up."

Hale noted that there are many teachers and public sector employees who reside in New Jersey and tend to be particularly emphatic in their anti-Christie views. In general though, Hale said that Christie is perceived in the state as a leader who is focused on the tall tasks in front of him in Trenton, despite the obvious allure of a bigger stage.

"I think he's committed to New Jersey," Hale said. "He likes to view himself as this regular guy that wants to do the best that he can for his home state, and he's got a lot of Jersey pride. He's said that in his State of the State a couple of times-that he wants to bring that Jersey pride back. So I do think that part's real. I also think the limelight and the rock star quality-anybody's got to be affected by that."

President Obama defended his proposed $3.73 trillion 2012 budget on Tuesday against criticisms that it would not go far enough in addressing the nation's fiscal crisis in a manner that his own deficit commission suggested.

Facing questions from reporters who pressed him on why his budget cuts did not address entitlement spending, which is the long-term driver of the national deficit, Obama noted that he was on pace to meet his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term and said that he would work with members of both parties to address the larger fiscal problems going forward.

"To use an analogy that families are familiar with, we're not going to be running up the credit card anymore," Obama said.

Asked about proposed cuts to expenditures that are particular important to him, such as funding for community programs, Obama said, "There's some provisions in this budget that are hard for me to take."

But most of the questions from reporters were based on concerns that the budget cuts were too meager, rather than too draconian.

In acknowledging these criticisms, Obama also insisted that he was on pace to meet his promises to the nation.

"We've taken a scalpel to the discretionary budget rather than a machete," Obama said. "I've said in the State of the Union, and I'll repeat, that side of the ledger only accounts for 12 percent of our budget."

Obama said that he agreed with "much of the framework" that his fiscal commission put forward, though he disagreed with other parts of it.

The president argued that while Social Security was not the massive contributor to the deficit that it is often portrayed to be, Medicare and Medicaid were indeed "huge problems."

"I'm prepared to work with Democrats and Republicans to start dealing with that in a serious way," Obama said, arguing that the health care reform law had begun to tackle the issue of high medical costs.

Obama said that as Washington turned to address the most pressing fiscal issues, he wanted to see a repeat of the "genuine spirit of compromise" that existed in the lame-duck session of Congress last December when legislators cut a bipartisan deal on taxes and achieved successes on a range of other issues.

"In this town, you guys are pretty impatient," Obama said to the reporters sitting in front of him. "If something doesn't happen today, the assumption is that it's just not going to happen."

Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson should be relieved GOP former Gov. Jeb Bush has indicated he won't challenge him in next year's Senate race, because a new poll shows the Democrat would come up short.

A Mason-Dixon poll out this morning shows that in a matchup between Bush and Nelson, Nelson would lose by 8 points, 49 percent to 41 percent.

The poll of 625 registered voters was conducted on Feb. 9 and 10 and has a margin or error of 4 percentage points.

Late last year, Bush signaled to state Senate President Mike Haridopolos that he would not run, giving Haridopolos the green light to go forward with a campaign. He has since announced a bid and raised $1 million in a day earlier this month.

But Haridopolos has a long way to go to make things competitive against Nelson, who led him 48 percent to 25 percent in the survey.

Similarly, former House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, who is known to be another prolific fundraiser examining the race, also trails Nelson by more than 20 points, 46 percent to 24 percent.

The other two names tested who are seriously considering the race are Rep. Connie Mack and former Sen. George LeMieux. While they have higher name recognition in the state and performed better against Nelson in the poll, they aren't expected to perform as well in a GOP primary.

Mack scored 40 percent to Nelson's 45 percent, and LeMieux took 35 percent to Nelson's 49 percent.

In a video posted on an Orthodox Jewish online news publication on Monday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seen discussing at length his critical views of the health care reform law, suggesting that it does not address the most pressing issues facing the health care system both nationwide and in the city he governs.

In the video, Bloomberg is shown paying a visit to members of a mourning family who had recently lost their brother. After Bloomberg offers his condolences, one of the family members noted that his brother was in the emergency room for 73 hours before he died and said that overcrowding in emergency rooms in New York had become out of control.

"It's going to get worse with the health care bill and with the government's cutbacks," Bloomberg said, predicting that hospitals would close due to a lack of funding. "All of these costs keep going up. Nobody wants to pay any more money, and at the rate we're going, health care is going to bankrupt us."

Asked what he would do to improve emergency room care, Bloomberg proposed immigration reform to make it easier for doctors from foreign countries who study in the United States to obtain green cards and suggested that tort reform would also help with controlling costs.

Bloomberg, who has denied rumors that he is interested in mounting a self-funded, independent presidential campaign in 2012, said that the country needed to start making tougher decisions about where to devote its resources when it comes to health care.

"If you show up with prostate cancer and you're 95 years old, we should say, ‘Go and enjoy. Have a nice (inaudible). Live a long life. There's no cure, and we can't do anything,'" Bloomberg said. "If you're a young person, we should do something about it. Society's not ready to do that yet."

Bloomberg has previously voiced criticism of the health care reform law, and in the video he reiterated his concern that the law does not address the issues of cost and level of care.

Asked if he was in favor of repealing the law, Bloomberg did not answer the question directly but did offer a prediction.

"I think the Republicans will unfund it," he said. "Having said that, you still need some solutions. And saying ‘no' is not a solution. So I'm not -- you know, some stuff I don't like, but being against everything is mashugana as well."

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on the Laura Ingraham Radio Show on Monday that Republicans were considering using a "continuing resolution" that would fund the government for the fiscal year to defund the enactment of health care reform, The Hill reported.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney swooped into the Silver State Monday to headline the International Franchise Association's annual conference in Las Vegas and met with potential campaign donors when he was in town.

He hasn't announced his second presidential bid yet, but his pre-campaign trips to two early states show that Romney has an early state strategy in the 2012 GOP nomination fight - not just a national strategy based on his name recognition and potential frontrunner status in the face of vulnerabilities in some of the early states. So as other near-certain candidates like Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty begin adding more trips to the Hawkeye State and the Palmetto State, Romney is racking up early miles to New Hampshire and Nevada.

There are no public trips to Iowa or South Carolina yet on the docket for Romney, and his advisers don't expect him to perform terribly well in either state. He is, however, scheduled to headline a GOP event in New Hampshire on March 5. What's more, he'll return to Nevada for the Republican Jewish Coalition's meeting at the end of March.

The Nevada-New Hampshire strategy makes sense for the Bay Stater: Romney boasts polling leads in both states.

A WMUR poll in the Granite State shows Romney winning 40 percent of the 357 likely Republican primary voters surveyed between Jan. 28 and Feb. 7. The second-place finisher in the survey was former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who received 10 percent. Giuliani is not usually named as a candidate, although he has been calling activists in the state to gauge support. The poll's margin of error was 5.2 percentage points.

Public Policy Polling (D) surveyed 400 likely Nevada GOP primary voters between Jan. 3 and Jan. 5. Romney's lead was less commanding than it is in New Hampshire, but he pulled 31 percent of respondents, compared to 19 percent for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, 18 percent for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 14 percent for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and 7 percent for Texas Rep. Rand Paul.

In addition to the two critical early states of New Hampshire and Nevada, Romney also likely will make some of the next voting primary states, Michigan and Florida, priorities. He won Michigan and finished second in the Sunshine State in the last presidential race.

In the last presidential primary, Romney developed leads over time in the two first states, Iowa and New Hampshire, and then finished second in both. His campaign strategy for winning the nomination centered on those two states, but campaign aides said there was no real "Plan B" in the event he lost both. While it's too early to tell how the nuances of the strategy will change this time, New Hampshire and Nevada appear high on the likely candidate's list of must-wins.

The Boston Globe, however, reported Monday that winning Nevada's caucuses may not be a slam dunk for Romney like it was in 2008, because this cycle, the caucuses will be binding, and the influence of the tea party changes the dynamic of the race.

As for his latest trip, Romney traveled to Vegas for Monday's event to speak to 2,700 small business owners gathered for the IFA's conference at the MGM Grand.

According to a spokesman, Romney didn't speak from a prepared text and fielded questions from IFA's chairman, Ken Walker.

While Romney dodged Walker's question about when he will announce his all-but-certain candidacy and didn't mention President Obama's name a single time, he spent a good portion of his time explaining how his expertise in the business world translates to Washington.

"He spent a lot of time talking about being frustrated that politicians don't understand how to run a business, and that he believes this is the reason they haven't been able to create policies that help small businesses grow and add jobs," said a spokesman.

The event was closed to the press, but the IFA will post a video of his 40-minute address in the coming days. He called the current agenda "the most anti-business agenda in a lifetime."

In addition to spreading his message to 2,700 small business owners from all over the country that he may be able to stroke for grassroots purposes, Romney also met with a cadre of his former Nevada donors, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said his speech to the audience gathered at this year's Conservative Political Action Committee conference would be "different" than the rest of the speakers' addresses, and it was.

The potential presidential contender did not set out to fire up the crowd; rather, he served up tough love and laid out his vision for dealing with the nation's financial state. Daniels spoke to a slightly different audience than his potential competitors for the GOP nomination have so far; he spoke to the Ronald Reagan banquet, a fundraising dinner that attracts an older crowd of GOP donors who were receptive to his message.

He stayed true to his belief that fiscal issues are paramount and weaved in and out of dry laugh lines and grave language about the importance of getting spending under control, calling the nation's debt the "red menace."

"Every conflict has its draft dodgers," he said. "There are those who will not enlist with us. Some who can accept, or even welcome, the ballooning of the state, regardless of the cost in dollars, opportunity, or liberty, and the slippage of the United States into a gray parity with the other nations of this earth."

He also offered this: "Our morbidly obese federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric surgery."

Daniels did not dodge talking about his "OMB assignment" as budget director under President Bush. That job has already caused him some consternation as he takes heat for the current deficit's origins on his watch, which may be why he pointed out that history has forgotten he was the first outspoken critic of earmarks in Congress - but that he got nowhere in ending the practice.

His speech received applause and laughter throughout and a standing ovation at the end, but the audience was silent when he touched on the decision before him about the presidential race.

"I for one have no interest in standing in the wreckage of our Republic saying, ‘I told you so' or ‘You should've done it my way,'" he said.

Daniels said earlier Friday that he's asked four other people over the last year to run for president but hasn't been successful, and there's not yet someone else in the field who would be his choice -- which carries some importance as it becomes clearer that his close friend Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is preparing a bid.

He then said in his speech that the worst thing over the next two years he can imagine would be for the GOP to win the 2012 presidential election and then fail to improve conditions in the country, while a close second would be to lose to President Obama and "subject the nation to what might be a fatal last dose of statism."

But in laying out a general-election, national case, Daniels reminded his audience that not every voter is as energized by conservative causes and commentators as they are, and they need to understand that as they move forward.

And as a bit of a warning to the Republican Party, he said, "As we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us, just a bit."

The presidential field may be wide open, but one candidate is playing the role of the inevitable front-runner, as his performance at the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference this weekend shows.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney brought with him to the event a large entourage that stayed for several days, while most other potential candidates dropped in and out of the conference to make their speeches and headline a reception or two. Other serious contenders brought just a few key staffers, but many didn't even have their top political aide in tow.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee declined to attend this year's CPAC conference, and they are the two potential candidates who are leading Romney in polls of the GOP primary electorate. Romney, however, is hiring staff and planning his campaign, and if Huckabee and Palin both choose not to run, Romney would become the de facto front-runner whether he wants that double-edged sword of a position or not.

Romney was already the object of the rest of the GOP field's attacks when he ran for president in 2008; as the de facto front-runner in this campaign, he can only expect that to increase. But Romney's team has been hesitant to cast him as inevitable for that reason, even though their actions seem to suggest they're doing otherwise.

The biggest difference, for example, between Romney and the rest of the candidates was in his entrance and exit for his official CPAC address.

Aides to Romney spent a good portion of Thursday afternoon scouting the site of the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington to find routes that would allow the candidate to get to the stage the following morning without having to interact with the press and other conference attendees.

Some aides said he would take questions from the press after his speech, which caused more than 50 journalists to line up behind the stage waiting for him. But after giving his speech on Friday morning, Romney worked a rope line in the crowd and signed books backstage, until an official came back to tell the press he had exited another way and wouldn't be returning.

He escaped to a reception on another level of hotel, and exited that event through yet another back route.

The escape exercise and unwillingness to meet with the press mirror Palin's activities last year when she was on a tour to promote her second book, "America By Heart." Reporters complained about a lack of access to the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, and in recent weeks she has made herself somewhat more accessible.

But Romney seems to be taking the space Palin occupied last year by following along the same path of extremely limited access to differentiate himself from the rest of the field. Indeed, some of Romney's potential top competitors for the 2012 Republican nomination took strikingly different tacks in their approach to CPAC.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune came through the front door in the lobby of the hotel and spent the half-hour before his address mingling with conference attendees and reporters. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who came to town for the event, stayed in a different hotel but hung around after his speech and parked on a couch in the hotel lobby, chatting with supporters.

Even Donald Trump entered through the front door of the hotel on Thursday and got mobbed by the crowd.

By a different measure, Romney's remarks went farthest so far of his potential GOP competitors in trying to stay out of intra-party battles and instead focus squarely on President Obama.