KEENE, N.H. - With a well-reviewed debate performance and accompanying jumps in crowd sizes, news media coverage and donations, Jon Huntsman said Sunday he's starting to see the "light at the end of the tunnel" in the first-in-the-nation state where the former Utah governor has staked his campaign.

Just weeks after Huntsman's press corps remained a stagnant handful, several dozen reporters stood atop counters at the Bean Shoppe in Hampstead, N.H. on Sunday afternoon following what many pundits have called his strongest debate yet. The crowd of Huntsman fans, numbering at least 200, overflowed onto the sidewalk outside.

"This is it!" Huntsman exclaimed as he walked out the front door of the shop, hands raised in victory. "You're seeing a market-mover right here, no question about that!" At a Portsmouth, N.H. stop on Tuesday, Huntsman acknowledged he'd need a "market-moving event" to propel him out of New Hampshire and into competition in South Carolina.

Republican presidential candidate, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman campaigns during a town hall style meeting at Goss International in Durham, N.H. , Jan. 5, 2012.

/ AP Photo/Stephan Savoia

In a rebuke to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, The Boston Globe on Thursday endorsed Jon Huntsman for the Republican presidential nomination, marking the former Utah governor's sixth -- and by far largest -- newspaper endorsement in or near the state where he has chosen to put all of his campaign chips.

Republican presidential candidate, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman

/ AP Photo/Winslow Townson

Portsmouth, N.H. -- Five days before the New Hampshire presidential primary, where he's staked his campaign, Jon Huntsman said Thursday that he will need a "market-moving event" to pull off a win against GOP front-runner Mitt Romney and invited Democrats and independents to support him.

At a campaign stop at the Pease International Trade Port in Portsmouth, Huntsman was asked by a member of the audience how he would beat Romney when poll numbers continue to dramatically favor the former Massachusetts governor, who also has made New Hampshire a prime target.

"You have to have a market-moving event," Huntsman told the crowd in an overflowing conference room. He said he hoped for a turnaround like the one former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum pulled off when he placed just eight votes behind Romney in the Iowa caucus Tuesday night. Santorum had been trailing in the polls until the final days before the caucus, and he attributed his success to several months of town-by-town retail politics.

Republican presidential candidate, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul

/ Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

ANKENY, Iowa - After a third-place finish in the Iowa Republican caucuses, presidential candidate Ron Paul pronounced himself "satisfied" with the results and vowed to fight on in the next primary event in New Hamsphire.

"I think there's nothing to be ashamed of, everything to be satisfied, and be ready and rearing to move on, onto the next stop, which is new Hampshire," Paul said to cheering room of 250 supporters. Members of his family, including his wife, Carol, and son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, stood beside him.

Despite worse-than-expected numbers placing him behind Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator, Paul said he was glad to be one of "three winners," an improvement from his performance 2008, when he placed fifth in the Iowa caucuses.

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, campaigns at the Cass County Community Center in Atlantic, Iowa, Dec. 29, 2011.

/ AP Photo

Updated 8:45 p.m. ET

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa - Rep. Ron Paul said Friday he blames his own rising poll numbers for the heightened scrutiny that his hands-off foreign policy views have recently received.

Asked during a town hall in La Mars, Iowa on Friday why his opponents have begun to hit him on what they call his "dangerous" positions on U.S. international relations, Paul chuckled.

"I think going up in the polls, all of a sudden they came and felt the necessity to find something," he said. "They couldn't find any flip-flops, so they had to work on something else.

"But on the foreign policy, they like to of course use words that, you know, tries to destroy the whole philosophy," Paul continued. "So they say, 'Oh, he's nothing but an isolationist, he's weak on foreign policy.' Of course, it's exactly the opposite."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry was the latest rival of Paul's to blast the Texas congressman on foreign policy. On Friday in Waverly, Iowa, he cited Iran as one of the areas in which he and Paul are on a "180-degree course."

AMHERST, N.H. - Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, on Wednesday defended his hard-hitting attacks on Newt Gingrich, which include an ad in which he accuses his former House GOP colleague of "serial hypocrisy" and another in which he depicts Gingrich as a corrupt Washington insider.

"I think pointing out people's positions is not negative," Paul told reporters. "If you go after people and you distort information and it becomes personal, that could be construed as negative. But if the media won't talk about a person's record, I think the candidates have a responsibility to point out well, his position used to be this. What's wrong with that?"

Paul has seen his political stock rise in Iowa, where some polls have shown him in second place behind Gingrich. Paul said such numbers are evidence that his campaign is peaking at the right time.

Republican presidential candidates, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, left, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, shake hands before participating in a one-on-one debate in Manchester, N.H., Monday, Dec. 12, 2011.

/ AP Photo

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Newt Gingrich took a respite Monday from battling with Mitt Romney for the top spot on the GOP campaign totem pole to engage in something more to his liking: an affable foreign policy debate with Jon Huntsman.

The event between the former Utah governor and former House Speaker at St. Anselm College in Manchester, billed as a Lincoln-Douglas style debate, was more of a friendly discussion between a former ambassador and former professor.

At one point, Huntsman praised Gingrich for being "a great historian" - a kinder description than he offered at a Sunday media availability, when he dismissed Gingrich as a "professor" to Huntsman's superior "practitioner."

Disagreements were downplayed. When asked about dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran, Huntsman reiterated his standard answer: "All options need to be on the table."

AP Photo/Winslow Townson

PETERBOROUGH, N.H. -- Hours before facing off against Newt Gingrich in a Lincoln-Douglas style debate, Jon Huntsman on Monday downplayed his recent loss of some supporters in the first-in-the-nation state to Gingrich and Mitt Romney as "political gamesmanship."

Gingrich's New Hampshire director, Andrew Hemingway, confirmed to CBS News/National Journal that Richard Brothers, former Granite State commissioner of employment security and an early Huntsman backer, has shifted his support to the former speaker. Shortly afterward, news broke that Susie Wiles, Huntsman's former campaign manager who left during a shake-up in July, would endorse Romney and act as his Florida co-chair.

/ AP Photo/Cliff Owen

LONDONDERRY, N.H. - Excluded from Saturday's GOP presidential debate, Jon Huntsman concentrated on wooing Granite State votes, using markedly sharper language than he has in the past.

His evening town hall meeting in this city, which drew about 150 people, marked the second time that the former Utah governor has not been on stage with his fellow contenders. With his current low standing in polls, he did not meet the threshold of support to qualify.

Asked whether he would commit to not run as a third-party candidate should he fail to get the GOP nomination, Huntsman reiterated one of his favorite lines, usually used as a crack toward other candidates: "I don't need to take pledges of any kind, particularly when I'm going to win as the Republican," he said.

But when pressed by the questioner on how such a move could doom the GOP's chance of taking the White House, Huntsman quipped that the only solution is to pick "the most electable candidate" in the first place.

Herman Cain speaks during a rally with supporters, Nov. 17, 2011, in Nashua, N.H.

/ AP Photo/Jim Cole

In the hours before he makes his planned midday announcement about the future of his presidential campaign, Republican candidate Herman Cain reached out to some of his rivals.

"We have talked to the Cain Camp, but we don't want to characterize the conversations," said Alice Stewart, a spokesman for Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.

Cain was in a downtown Atlanta hotel Saturday morning, near the site of his campaign headquarters, which he was scheduled to formally open today. He has said he will announce his plans there at an early afternoon appearance.

AP Photo/Mark Humphrey

MURFREESBORO, Tenn.-- Though he assured the dean of Middle Tennessee State University that there would be no politics during his visit, Herman Cain called it "tempting" to respond to a handful of protesters who interrupted his lecture here Thursday night.

As Cain was recounting his climb up the Pillsbury company's corporate ladder to a full lecture hall of about 300 students, someone shouted, "Mic check!" setting off a minute's worth of shouting from the audience. "We are the 99 percent!" several representing Occupy Wall Street chanted; "Sexual abuse is unacceptable!" one student hollered.

In counter-protest, several students yelled at the protesters to leave; one said, "We actually want to hear him, now get out!" Shortly afterwards, the protesters did.

Herman Cain

DAYTON, Ohio - Sounding like a candidate looking for a reason to stay in the race, Herman Cain on Wednesday told supporters here he is the victim of "character assassination" and appealed to them to stick with him in the face of another allegation of sexual misconduct.

"Stay inspired," Cain told an enthusiastic audience of several hundred people at a local hotel. "They want me to believe that we can't do this. They want you to believe that with enough character assassination on me that I will drop out."

CBS News

HILLSDALE, MICH-- Don't count Herman Cain out of the GOP presidential race just yet.

After Cain set off speculation he was about to withdraw with a Tuesday morning conference call in which he said he was "reassessing" his candidacy following one woman's allegation that she and Cain carried on a 13-year affair, signs later in the day seemed to indicate that the ebullient Georgia businessman isn't ready to call it quits.

Just before unveiling his foreign policy plan to a crowd of about 500 at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Cain's Twitter account read: "The definition of reassess is: To consider again, esp. while paying attention to new factors. Doesn't sound like dropping out..."

Campaign advisers sought to relay a similar sentiment to National Journal and CBS News, portraying the "reassessment" as just another transition in the rollercoaster campaign.

Cain campaign manager Mark Block and spokesman JD Gordon both confirmed that Cain has no plans to drop his bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

Republican presidential contender Herman Cain

Herman Cain is latching onto the failure of the congressional "super committee" in an attempt to jump-start his flagging campaign. Cain sent a fundraising e-mail to supporters on Tuesday titled, "Super Committees Don't Solve Problems. Leaders Do."

In the e-mail, Cain faults President Obama for having "forced Congress to establish the super committee and then said 'NO' to any serious plan to cut spending." (In fact, the super committee was part of a bipartisan deal reached over the summer. The deal, signed to law by Obama, also stipulated that the committee's failure would trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over 10 years.)