Mitt Romney -- in a move to grow his grass-roots base and peel off votes from a fading Newt Gingrich -- found new support in a national tea party straw poll Sunday. But Gingrich and Michele Bachmann remain the movement's favorites.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul's surge continues in Iowa, with a new Public Policy Polling survey showing the Texas congressman taking the lead there with 23 percent.

Paul's first-place showing makes him the sixth candidate to lead the field in Iowa. At various times, Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Gingrich and Romney have topped polls in the Hawkeye State.

The loser of the week appeared to be Gingrich, who fell behind Romney in the latest PPP Iowa survey. Romney garnered 20 percent, while Gingrich had 14 percent. Bachmann, Perry and Rick Santorum were tied at 10 percent, and Huntsman trailed with 4 percent.

Romney, who remains stuck in the mid-20s nationally, reached out to the right on Sunday night, appearing on a "Tele-Forum" hosted by Tea Party Patriots, a group that claims to be the largest tea organization in the country.

The former Massachusetts governor has avoided most tea party events, instead focusing on picking up endorsements from the GOP establishment. But with Gingrich in trouble, Romney's camp saw the Tea Party Patriots' event as an opportunity to branch out.

TPP leader Jenny Beth Martin said "more than 22,000 people" listened in to the two-hour teleconference that included question-and-answer sessions with Romney, Bachmann, Gingrich and Santorum.

A straw poll afterward showed Gingrich garnering 31 percent of the vote and Bachmann receiving 28 percent.

Romney placed third with 20 percent, but that's more support than he generally gets from voters who identify themselves as tea party members.

By contrast, Perry, once considered a tea party favorite, received only 2 percent in the poll.

The TPP straw vote and the PPP Iowa poll illustrate deep splits the Republican field.

While Paul jumped into the lead of the PPP's Iowa survey, the libertarian-leaning congressman received just 3 percent of the Tea Party Patriots' straw poll Sunday night.

Even worse, 64 percent said they were "not at all enthusiastic" about Paul as the party's nominee. That percentage was only exceeded by Huntsman's 65 percent.

Bachmann, meantime, nosed out Gingrich in the "enthusiasm" category, with 35 percent of straw poll voters saying they were "very enthusiastic" about Bachmann. Gingrich stood at 34 percent.

Bachmann stepped up her attacks on the former House speaker Sunday, saying he "needs to come clean on his involvement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

"He said [Sunday] on Face the Nation that he needed to better explain what he did to earn the $1.6 million he took from Freddie Mac, and then was still not forthcoming on the influence peddling he did to keep Freddie afloat at a time when I was trying to send Freddie Mac, the epicenter of the financial meltdown, into receivership," Bachmann said.

The congresswoman also hammered Gingrich's shifting positions on immigration.

"While he wants us to believe that he would only send those home who broke the law less than 25 years ago, he has recently said that he would extend amnesty to all illegal workers currently in the United States," Bachmann said.

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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or (772) 801-5341.