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By Alexander Burns (@aburnspolitico,
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POPPING IN IOWA - PAWLENTY HITS THE ROAD - The former Minnesota governor kicks off his "Road to Results" tour with a town hall in Coralville at 12:30 p.m. today. He'll drive nearly 700 miles this week in an RV, visiting 13 counties and 18 cities by Friday. First look at the RV here:
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BREAKING - CROSSROADS BLITZ HITS THE HOUSE - American Crossroads GPS will target 10 Democratic members of Congress in the newest phase of its $20 million air war against national Democrats. Crossroads GPS has already gone on offense against President Barack Obama and targeted Democratic senators up for election in 2012. Now, the conservative juggernaut is running attack ads against these 10 House members: Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross, Utah Rep. Jim Matheson, Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader, North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler, New York Reps. Bill Owens and Tim Bishop, Iowa Rep. Leonard Boswell, Kentucky Rep. Ben Chandler, Illinois Rep. Jerry Costello and California Rep. Lois Capps. That's most of the
vulnerable Democrats who survived 2010, plus one or two more ...

LET'S GO TO THE VIDEOTAPE - FROM THE ANTI-MATHESON AD: "You voted for skyrocketing debt, the failed stimulus, to keep Obamacare, reckless spending. And how did you pay for it? Keeping billions in taxes and adding trillions in crushing debt [On screen: 'Matheson voted to raise the debt limit four times'] ... Sorry, Congressman Matheson: No more reckless spending, no more new taxes and no more blank checks." Watch the anti-Matheson ad here:
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MORE - WHAT IT COSTS: The House campaign will add up to a price tag of almost $1.4 million over two weeks, and accompanies the national Crossroads ad, "Wake Up," that continues to run on national cable and swing-state broadcast TV.
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FIRST IN SCORE - RSLC TO LAUNCH 'FUTURE MAJORITY PROJECT' - The Republican State Leadership Committee will unveil a new initiative this morning aimed at recruiting Hispanic and female candidates to run for office. The Future Majority Project has three core goals: recruiting at least 100 new Hispanic legislative candidates nationwide, increasing the number of female Republican legislative candidates and partnering with the College Republican National Committee for a national youth training program. RSLC president Chris Jankowski said in a statement: "The RSLC believes that cultivating change is best achieved through a bottom-up, state-level approach. Over the last decade, the RSLC has built
a record, state by state, of electing the GOP's farm team whose members go on to be elected to Governorships, seats in Congress, and we believe one day soon -- the White House." The FMP has a board of advisers that includes Govs. Susana Martinez of Mexico, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Luis Fortuno of Puerto Rico; Reps. Quico Canseco of Texas and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington; and George P. Bush.

As Rudy Giuliani hands out compliments, Michele Bachmann signs another pledge and Richard Lugar starts to look stronger, here's POLITICO's Morning Score: your daily guide to the permanent campaign.

5 QUESTIONS FOR 2012 - With the Q2 reports behind us and Ames coming up quickly, it's all but certain that action on the Hill this week will overshadow the presidential race. But that campaign may be about to get a major shakeup, leaving us with these questions for the week ahead:

(1) How many presidential campaigns have boots on the ground in Austin right now?

(2) Will any governors other than Sam Brownback of Kansas join Rick Perry's prayer gathering on August 6?

(3) Will any Republican running for president stick up for the McConnell option for resolving the debt limit fight?

(4) When will President Barack Obama start fundraising again?

(5) When will Scott Brown endorse (or not) Richard Cordray's nomination to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

SET YOUR WATCHES - COUNTDOWN WITH RICK PERRY: The governor of Texas will decide in the next two to three weeks whether he'll enter the 2012 presidential race, he told the Des Moines Register. The three-week mark would come right around the time of Perry's early August prayer event in Houston. And speaking of prayer, it's hard to see how Perry would back away from this kind of statement: "I'm getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I've been called to do. This is what America needs."
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GIULIANI PRAISES HIM: The moderate former New York mayor gushed over the tea party-beloved Texan on CNN's "State of the Union." "Rick has got a great record, probably one of the strongest records of any governor in America, and one of the longest running governorships," said Giuliani, whom Perry endorsed for president in 2008. "Rick is a good friend."
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NOT A GOOD HEADLINE - "Texas spending kept rising for years with Perry as governor" - The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports: "Perry has long promoted the state's fiscal record as a model for the country and a key to why Texas has weathered the recession better than most other states ... Yet before the latest one, the Texas budget had consistently grown during Perry's time as governor, with total spending rising faster than inflation and population growth, state data show. What's more, spending through 2011, adjusted for population and inflation, rose more on average while Perry has been in charge than it did under his predecessor, George W. Bush, according to a Star-Telegram analysis. In the
past, Perry has criticized Bush for not controlling spending while governor."
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WHAT THE 2012 CANDIDATES ARE UP TO: Tim Pawlenty has his Coralville town hall to kick off his RV tour of Iowa. Thaddeus McCotter is also in the state to address the Clay County GOP Dinner. Rick Santorum will visit his New Hampshire headquarters in Manchester and participate in a golf tournament (!) for the Republican Victory PAC.

MORE - MICHELE BACHMANN (R-IOWA) - The congresswoman, ostensibly from Minnesota, starts her day at an event in Omaha with Rep. Steve King, holding a "press availability concerning Iowa flooding." In the afternoon, Bachmann will visit Columbia, S.C., to sign the Jim DeMint-backed "Cut, Cap and Balance" pledge.

2012 TALKER - "Gay rights groups target Bachmann" - POLITICO's Ben Smith: "Even as Bachmann's tightly-disciplined campaign pivots sharply away from her roots as a social conservative warrior to embrace her newer image as a Tea Party fiscal crusader, gay leaders are looking to drag her back into the fray ... The reason: The third-term Minnesota congresswoman and her husband, therapist Marcus Bachmann, have a history of battling gay rights groups in Minnesota long before she stepped onto the national stage. 'Michele Bachmann is the very definition of a target-rich environment, and given her husband's positions and things she's said in past she's going to have a really hard time appearing as a
reasonable mainstream candidate,' said Michael Cole-Schwartz, the communications director for the group Human Rights Campaign."
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COMING SOON - WIDER PALIN RELEASE: The makers of the pro-Palin documentary, "The Undefeated," plan to announce information today about a wider national release of the movie. The film debuted in 10 cities over the weekend, with these results, according to the Hollywood Reporter: "The backers of the Sarah Palin documentary The Undefeated claimed victory as the film opened in 10 theaters over the weekend, but the numbers suggest only a so-so debut. Undefeated grossed $60,000 to $75,000, meaning a per-screen average of $6,000 or $7,500, the measure by which limited openings are judged ... [Filmmaker Stephen] Bannon said details of a wider release will be announced Monday."
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MONEY TALKER - WHO HAS THE SMALL DONORS? President Obama does, in a big way, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. On the Republican side, the picture is more mixed: "In all, Obama reported raising $46.3 million between April and June. Of that, $21.65 million came from individual donors who gave him $200 or less ... Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich all reported collecting between 45 percent and 55 percent of their funds during the second quarter from donors who gave $200 or less ... Romney's campaign collected just 6 percent of its second-quarter funds from donors who gave $200 or less -- $1.1 million
out of $18.38 million. Towering head and shoulders above the other GOP candidates in terms of money raised from small-dollar donors in terms of a percentage of their total takes is Rep. Michele Bachmann [who] reported $1.6 million in new contributions during the second quarter. Of these, two-thirds -- more than $1 million -- came from small-dollar donors."
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THE STEELE LEGACY - RNC SWIMS TOWARD THE SURFACE - The Republican National Committee continues to raise money at a steady clip, but remains more than $17 million in debt half a year after Michael Steele was booted out of the chairmanship. An RNC official confirmed to Morning Score than the committee raised $6.7 million in June and had $7.3 million in the bank at the end of the month. More from Roll Call: "The RNC will report remaining debt from 2010 of $17.5 million, after beginning January with nearly $25 million ... RNC Chairman Reince Priebus believes the committee is well on track to close 2011 with his previously stated goal of at least $10 million in the bank. Priebus has burned money
at a lower rate than his predecessor ... But the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised a combined $86 million in the second quarter alone - and the DNC brought in more than $38 million."
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SENATE BUZZ - WARREN, AVAILABLE - President Obama is expected to nominate former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray today to lead the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That means Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor, TARP cop and liberal media darling, is officially free to run for Senate in Massachusetts, if she wants to. The Nation starts the cheerleading: The best place for Warren would be the U.S. Senate, and it happens that a seat is available -- representing the state where she has lived for much of her adult life: Massachusetts. Republican Senator Scott Brown, a Wall Street favorite, will be seeking a full six-year term in 2012 ... Four years in the Senate
could well make Elizabeth Warren a serious contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination -- and rightly so."
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OVERHYPED IN INDIANA? MOURDOCK FLAGS: When Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock announced his primary challenge to Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, he looked poised to sweep the longtime incumbent out of office - and maybe out of the race. But the buzz in Indiana is that Mourdock may have peaked too early, and Hoosier political scribe Brian Howey explained why in his Sunday column: "Mourdock's June swoon went like this: On June 8, seven of 10 members of the Indiana Republican Central Committee who endorsed Mourdock were replaced ... Mourdock's campaign manager Jim Holden ended up in an altercation with a video blogger ... On June 23, WTHR-TV reported that Treasurer Mourdock had homestead
exemptions on two properties. This was an embarrassment for the state treasurer, who also heads the Indiana Bond Bank ... Lugar reported $907,000 raised for the second quarter, with 87 percent coming from Hoosier donors, and had $3.5 million cash on hand. Mourdock raised $300,000 ... With the Mourdock campaign flagging on all these fronts, he is hoping for national intervention."
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CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "We shudder to think what the Journal would look like today without the sale to News Corp." - The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, defending its scandal-engulfed parent company
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