"Doesn't appear" Palin will run: DeMint

The Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial start of the presidential campaign season, and many of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have started to take shots at each other, not just at President Obama, reports CBS News political correspondent Jan Crawford.

Several jabbed at Texas Gov. Rick Perry, perceived by many pundits as the latest frontrunner.

That list included Sarah Palin - who's managing to keep speculation alive about whether she's going to toss her hat into the GOP ring.

At a Tea Party rally in Indianola, Iowa, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee took what Crawford says appeared to be a swipe at Perry, after reports suggesting he was cozy with big donors.

"Some GOP candidates," Palin said, "they also raise mammoth amounts of cash and we need to ask them, too: What, if anything, do their donors expect in return from their investments?"

Most of the leading Republican contenders will be in South Carolina today at a political forum hosted by powerful, arch-conservative Sen. Jim DeMint.

And DeMint told "Early Show" co-anchor Jeff Glor he doesn't think a Palin run is in the cards this time around.

"It doesn't appear that she is," going to get into the fray, DemInt said. "She's done a lot, I think, to engage the American people and stir things up, which we really needed to do, to get American citizens more involved in the process. It made a big difference in the last election. My hope is it'll make an even bigger difference in the next election, as people take back their government."

DeMint wouldn't say who he sees as the frontrunner at the moment.

"It's still very early," he said. "We've got all the top candidates in South Carolina today, and we're gonna give them a chance to define themselves on their terms, to talk about the American vision, to talk about what they would do differently than Barack Obama. So, I think we'll learn a lot from the candidates. This is not a gotcha meeting with sound-bite answers. We're gonna give each candidate over 20 minutes on the stage by themselves to talk about their vision for America."

For his part, DeMint said he's "gonna keep an open mind on the candidates. I wanna see how they respond to the issues that our nation is dealing with. I wann see what they say about the president's jobs plan that comes out (in an address later this week). I want to know what they think about this super committee recommendation (a joint congressional committee that will recommend decifit-cutting measures) when it comes out. And so I think, in a few months, we're gonna know which candidate really has the courage to speak out and to contrast themselves with what this president is doing."

Ad DeMint had some harsh words for some of what Mr. Obama is expected to propose in that jobs address.

"I spent most of m life in business,' DeMint told Glor, "and I'm hearing what the president is talking about, which are temporary incentives like giving a company 5,000 (dollars) to hire someone. It cost a company about $65,000 a year to create a $40,000-a-year job. No company is gonna create a job for $5,000. If they were gonna hire the person anyway, they would certainly take it. But the president is not thinking like an American businessperson who has to look long-term, has to have some certainty. We need to know what that tax rate's gonna be, what the cost of health insurance, what the cost of unemployment insurance. The way he's talking is not like what I hear from the businesses around South Carolina or throughout the country. So he doesn't seem to be on the same page with what it really takes to create jobs."