Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Other GOP Candidates Make Rounds

While the East Coast braces itself for Hurricane Irene and Northwestern states battle raging wildfires, Republican presidential hopefuls continue to plug away on the campaign trail.

Rick Perry is now the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, Gallup poll results showed on Wednesday. He received 29 percent of the votes, while former leader Mitt Romney received 17 percent, down from his leading 23 percent in July.

Perry signed the National Organization for Marriage's pledge to back a federal constitutional amendment against gay marriage, The Associated Press reported Friday.

The AP noted that this repudiated Perry's earlier comments that marriage rights should be left up to individual states.

Romney continued to tweet against President Obama, with the most recent posting saying that the President's approach to the budget should be rated triple A: Arrogant, Absent and Alarming.

He spoke about carbon emissions in New Hampshire and said he would not place restrictions on carbon emissions if elected, Reuters reported.

Do I think the world's getting hotter? Yeah, I don't know that but I think that it is, he said, Reuters reported. I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans.

What I'm not willing to do is spend trillions of dollars on something I don't know the answer to, he said.

Michele Bachmann, who came in first place in the Iowa straw poll but took fourth place in the Gallup poll with 10 percent of the votes, spoke at a town hall in Charleston, N.C. Thursday evening.

She spoke about Obama's healthcare plan, which she opposes, supporting a federal amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, and illegal immigration, CNN reported.

I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be paying benefits to people who are in the United States illegally, she said.

Ron Paul came in third in the Gallup poll with 13 percent of the votes, up from last month's 10 percent. He is scheduled to speak in New Hampshire on Friday to the state's Sheriff Association. He is also scheduled to make rounds in Iowa all day Saturday.

Newt Gingrich was in New Hampshire on Thursday. He spoke at the Presidential Oaks Assisted Living Facility in Concord.

He blamed the disappearance of manufacturing jobs on a snob effect by elites in government, colleges and the news media, the Concord Monitor reported.

If you can't manufacture anything, you can't sustain your military power, he said. If you can't manufacture anything, you don't have any jobs for people who are regular, everyday folks.

Herman Cain is in Israel, far from the campaign trail after disappointing results in the Iowa Straw poll and the Gallup poll. He arrived on Tuesday with his wife, Tweeting two days before that they had always wanted to go.

Looking out over #Israel. This has truly been an incredible journey! he tweeted on Friday.

Jon Huntsman spoke with Piers Morgan earlier this week and said he would be open to being Bachmann's vice presidential running mate if she wins the GOP nomination.

When Morgan pointed out that this could possibly be perceived as an acknowledgment of defeat, Huntsman defended his own answer.

This is a hypothetical conversation and I give you a more or less hypothetical answer, he told Morgan. That's okay. We're going to win and I have no doubt about that.