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.

In South Dakota Sen. John Thune's sprawling debut at this year's Conservative Political Action Committee conference, the potential 2012 Republican presidential contender got specific with some of his complaints about President Obama.

In contrast to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who also sought to present himself as the most credible alternative to Obama for the GOP, Thune pounded the Obama administration on a slew of specific issues, whereas Romney presented a more sweeping difference in vision.

Thune blasted "ObamaCare" and the Federal Communications Commission under Obama for "trying to regulate the Internet." He also criticized the EPA's maneuvers following the failure of cap-and-trade in Congress as well as the National Labor Relations Board for trying to act in light of the failure to pass card check.

Thune urged the adoption of "a two-year budget that spends money in the odd-numbered years and saves money in the even-numbered years, when folks go home to run for re-election," and he ticked off several specific issues Congress is working on, whereas Romney offered more holistic themes.

The contrast is an important one as Thune struggles with whether or not to make a presidential run now.

Neither Romney nor Thune took questions after their speech, but their entrances to the conference couldn't have been more different.

Thune entered through the front lobby, shaking hands and meeting new faces. There was less scrutiny and less attention on his appearance. Romney was ushered in for his speech and kept the press waiting while he escaped to a post-speech reception.

Romney is well-known to the GOP electorate after his first bid for the presidency in the last cycle; Thune, who has been ascending Republican Senate leadership, is a new face.

What's more, while Romney avoided talking about the Republican Party and its players, Thune took a slightly different approach.

He presented himself as a contrast to Obama, but he also tried to mix it up a little with the field.

He poked at potential Republican primary competitors Romney, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin right off the bat, reminding the audience, "I've never had a book signing. I've been to Iowa plenty of times, but it's usually on my way to South Dakota. And the closest I've come to being on a reality show is CSPAN's live coverage of the Senate floor. "

Romney just re-released his book, "No Apology," last week and has been promoting it. Pawlenty recently released a book, "Courage to Stand," and has been barnstorming Iowa already. Palin stars in a show about her life in Alaska on TLC.

Thune pointed out that he has been spending his time working for his constituents. He later mentioned that he sat next to Democratic Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York during the State of the Union address and joked, "Apparently it takes two Democrats to balance me out."

Advisers explained that Thune's presentation was meant to suggest he is the most conservative option to Obama who is also electable.

As Romney continues to plug his wife's eagerness to have him run for president in 2012, Thune promoted his wife, Kimberley, at both the open and close of the speech.

Near the end of his speech, he discussed his unsuccessful bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson in 2002 and successful second attempt at a Senate seat in 2004 when he ousted then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

"I'll never forget what my wife said the day we decided to run," he said. "She said, ‘I finally concluded and realized that what we went through in that Senate race in 2002 wasn't just about the winning. It was about being in the race.'"

"What?" he improvised, to laughs.

He continued, "I thought that was a pretty profound observation, because, for me, it's always about winning. I'm a competitor and I'm in it to win it. But she was saying that - win or lose - it's important to be in the arena. It's important to be out there and fighting for what we believe in. She was right then, and she's right now."

Some Republicans have speculated over the past year that Thune may need to run in 2012 in order to have a good shot at the presidency in future cycles if he is not successful now. And toward the end of his remarks, he warned, "We may not win every battle every time," but he urged the crowd to "have the courage to continue our fight" and "make 2012 our moment."

If Thune chooses not to run for president, advisers say he will look at the race for GOP whip now open after Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl announced his decision Thursday not to seek re-election, but for now he's still torn. Just as he was preparing to deliver his remarks, a loud "run, John, run" chant came from several young attendees in the audience.

And asked by RealClearPolitics this week what reporters should be writing about him these days, he joked, "Just make it up as you go along."

In a CPAC speech that mixed conservative red meat with humor that mostly came at President Obama's expense, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty positioned himself as a mainstream conservative who could appeal to both fiscal and social conservatives, even as other prospective Republican presidential candidates have focused mainly on pocketbook issues.

"One of the most important things that we should always remember is the motto of our country, In God We Trust, and we should stand on that foundation as our founders intended," Pawlenty said. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we as a nation must move towards God, not away from God."

Pawlenty made sure to distinguish himself from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney-a likely 2012 rival for the GOP presidential nomination, who spoke at the conference earlier on Friday-by attacking Obama over the health care reform law.

Romney has been criticized in conservative circles for enacting a law in Massachusetts that also included an individual mandate for citizens to buy insurance. Though he did not mention Romney by name, Pawlenty's jab sounded like the opening salvo of a broader attack that he is likely to launch against the early GOP frontrunner in the coming months.

"The individual mandate in Obamacare is a page right out of the Jimmy Carter playbook," Pawlenty said. "The left simply doesn't understand."

Pawlenty spoke in front of a mostly receptive crowd in a packed ballroom, but he had the misfortune of having to speak directly before Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who has a massive following of enthusiastic supporters here who cheered nearly every line of his speech.

As he did in his recently released book, Courage To Stand, Pawlenty touted his blue-collar biography in an effort to present himself as someone who is intimately familiar with economic hardship.

"For me, that real world experience started in my hometown of South St. Paul, Minnesota - a place filled with good-hearted people, strong families and the rock-solid values of the heartland," Pawlenty said. "Back in the 60s, when I grew up there, it was home to some of the world's largest stockyards and world's largest meat-packing plants. Many, many families in my hometown relied on those big plants for their paychecks, for their family's well-being and for their future. But those plants shut down, and so did a big part of the spirit and the soul of my hometown."

Hitting on many of the themes about the unsustainability of the federal deficit that nearly every speaker has focused on at CPAC, Pawlenty said that the issue was not one that was "a matter of right versus left."

"It's a matter of 6th grade mathematics," he said. "It isn't going to work. It's irresponsible, it's unsustainable-it's reckless. And just because we followed Greece into democracy, does not mean we need to follow them into bankruptcy."

On the day when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced his resignation amid a popular uprising in Cairo, Pawlenty listed the Muslim Brotherhood among foreign entities that Obama had "appeased." He said that the current administration did not understand the principle of projecting strength in the international arena.

"Bullies respect strength, they don't respect weakness," he said. "So when the United States of America projects its national security interests here and around the world, we need to do it with strength. We need to make sure that there is no equivocation, no uncertainty, no daylight between us and our allies around the world."

Former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney offered a sweeping preview of his message for his all-but-announced 2012 presidential run Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

In a speech designed to paint him as a credible general election challenger to President Obama, Romney went after the president right off the bat, lambasting his attempts to shake up his staff and embrace centrism as merely cosmetic.

"Make no mistake: What we are watching is not Brave New World; what we're watching is Groundhog Day!" he said to laughs in the crowd.

His speech was sprinkled with snarky comments to suggest that as president of the United States, Obama has been out of his league.

Romney denigrated Obama for promising that the unemployment rate would stay below 8 percent and then volunteering that it could be worse.

"It could be worse? This is the leader of the free world's answer to the greatest job loss since the Great Depression?" he asked. "What's next? Let them eat cake?"

He went on, sniping Obama, "Oh, excuse me. Organic cake."

Romney pointed out that there are more people out of work in the United States than are working in Canada.

"Let me make this very clear. If I decide to run for president, it won't take me two years to wake up to the job crisis threatening America. And I won't be asking Timothy Geithner how the economy works." He added, "I know."

His prepared remarks read "Tim Geithner," but Romney threw in the Timothy to play to the crowd. They also did not include the, "I know."

Romney also greeted Obama's outreach to CEOs with cynicism.

"His idea of conservative economic policy is to invite some corporate CEOs to the White House for an evening of table-talk," he said. "I'm sorry, Mr. President, but that's not a policy. It's a dinner party."

While he employed humor and sarcasm to rip the president, Romney's larger message was that Obama was never ready to lead the nation at home or abroad -- a message he used to hint that he is in fact qualified.

"It's going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work - it's going to take a new president," he said to cheers.

He also compared Obama to failed presidents of the past, noting that the job fairs and the unemployment lines around the country are Obama's "Hoovervilles," and that the unemployment rate is today's Misery Index. In doing so, he tied himself in a not-so-subtle way to President Reagan, who "hung the Misery Index around Jimmy Carter's neck."

Romney excoriated Obama's approach to the economy, bemoaning his embrace of "liberal social policies" like those in Europe, though he did not once mention the word "Democrat" during his speech. He did not mention Obama during the last quarter of his speech and instead pivoted to pushing his own likely 2012 campaign message, "Believe in America." The slogan, the subtitle of his re-released second book, "No Apology," appeared on bumper stickers and buttons throughout the conference as well as in his Twitter feed.

Romney tweeted to his followers to use the hash tag, "BelieveinUSA," to respond to his speech.

Ann Romney's introduction for her husband, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and the once and likely future candidate's own remarks about his wife at the beginning of his address at CPAC Friday underscored her importance as the Republican presidential primary campaign begins in earnest.

Romney's team has aggressively pushed Mrs. Romney's eagerness to see her husband run when many of the other potential spouses, save largely Todd Palin, have not been in the spotlight.

In fact, several potential candidates' wives have expressed reluctance at a potential campaign: notably Kimberley Thune, wife of South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Cheri Daniels, wife of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Daniels and Thune, if they both ran, would both compete for some of the same voters in the Republican primary, and Ann Romney's eagerness to see her husband run is another concealed but aggressive play in Romney's run in the "invisible primary" going on before any candidates are actually in the race.

The potential candidate stressed his wife's commitment to the race in a conference call with donors on Friday, and she said in her remarks today, "I know Mitt as a person, a very good person. I have also seen him as a leader. And I, for one, would like to see him lead the country as president of the United States."

Romney did not take questions from the press after his own address, but he held a reception in Washington's Marriott Wardman Park afterward with supporters.

Asked by a reporter there what his wife's push to get him to run means, he said, "She speaks for herself." And pressed on whether they're arguing over it, he joked, "Happens all the time."

As the Romneys and their staff exited, the overflow crowd from the reception chanted, "Romney," urging him to run.

Florida State Senate President Mike Haridopolos is attempting to establish himself as the early front-runner in the GOP Senate primary for the chance to take on Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in 2012.

In a phone interview on Thursday, Haridopolos touted a recent day when he locked down $1 million in contribution commitments from donors in the state as evidence that he intends to make a strong run at the nomination. No other candidate has announced yet, but Republican Rep. Connie Mack, former Sen. George LeMieux and former state House majority leader Adam Hasner are checking out the race, too.

Haridopolos said he's intent on raising money in Florida for now before he returns to Washington because he wants to show operatives in the Beltway that he's capable of pulling in state money first. He also scored the endorsement of state House Speaker Dean Cannon.

The candidate noted that he will roll out the endorsements of more statewide officials in the coming months.

He also noted that he's not paying attention to his potential primary opponents and "has blinders on" about his own campaign. In fact, his strategy has thus far been to paint himself as a general election opponent to Nelson: He challenged not his primary opponents but Nelson to a ban on fundraising during the state legislative session from March 8th to May 8th. Haridopolos said if Nelson doesn't raise money during that time, he won't either.

With Nelson running full speed ahead for re-election, such a scenario is highly unlikely, and the senator is unlikely to do anything that would elevate any of his potential opponents over the others.