Romney, accompanied by by Sen. Marco Rubio in Aston, Penn. Monday.

Via: Jae C. Hong / AP

Mitt Romney told reporters today that he supports efforts to extend low interest rates for college loans — appearing to align himself with a Democrat-sponsored bill and against Congressional Republicans.

"I fully support the effort to extend the low interest rate on student loans,” Romney said at a joint news conference with Florida Senator Marco Rubio. “There was some concern that that would expire halfway through the year, and I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates for students as a result of student loans, obviously, in part because of the extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market.”

In publicly breaking with his own party, Romney is taking away a potential wedge issue for President Obama's campaign — and giving hope to Democrats that they may find new momentum for the legislation. The deadline for the current, low interest rates to expire is July 1.

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., is sponsor of a bill that would extend the interest rates for another year, and said he hopes Romney's comments will "shake the Republican congressional leadership loose." The Romney campaign did not respond to BuzzFeed's question about whether the candidate specifically backs Courtney's legislation.

"I'm glad he signed on," Courtney told BuzzFeed, but said, "He obviously is responding to the politics of the situation. He has shown no leadership at all."

He added: "With the Republican Party the way it is, I'll take it where I can get it."

Republicans oppose the bill in part on the grounds that it isn't paid for.

But Romney's support doesn't ensure that his fellow Republicans will rally around him — indeed, this may test to what extent the GOP has accepted their presumptive presidential nominee as the party's standard-bearer.

Asked whether House Republican leadership would get behind Courtney's bill, given Romney's comments, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner was non-committal.

“The rising cost of tuition is a serious problem for students and their families, so it’s unfortunate that Washington Democrats put in place a law that would double student loan rates," said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel, apparently referring to a 2010 law backed by Obama that ended federal subsidies for private student loans. "That’s why Republicans and Democrats on both sides of Capitol Hill will be working on this issue in the coming months.”

Source: cache.daylife.com

WILMINGTON, Del. — The Republican primary campaign effectively ended yesterday, and Mitt Romney's aides and supporters have already begun turning their attention to their biggest choice of the next five months: The running mate.

Just hours after Rick Santorum left the race, voters at a rally here Monday were already clamoring to find out who would join Mitt Romney on the presidential ticket.

"I'm here to announce today that I do not even have a list!" Romney replied to a supporter's question.

But Romney does have a plan: One long-time GOP operative said Romney staffers are quietly circulating that former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, who joined the campaign as a “volunteer” advisor last week, will "take the lead" on the search for a Vice President.

The search, and the vetting that accompanies it, are likely to be conducted with particular intensity because senior party operatives are still reeling from their inability to defend vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in 2008. Party leaders expect the Romney camp better take the process seriously this time around, and everything about Romney's own methods suggest a careful, deliberate process. But Romney’s team itself is extremely light on general election experience, and they're turning to a cohort of old-time GOP hands in developing a strategy to win in November.

"Every candidate approaches the running-mate selection process differently," said one Romney advisor. "Governor Romney will approach it with the same level of seriousness he does every important decision."

Asked whether the vetting process had begun, one senior Romney aide told BuzzFeed, "Nothing like that is going on right now." And Romney echoed the sentiment on the stump, telling supporters here that Santorum's decision to drop out came as "a surprise," and that the campaign would only now begin preparing for the general.

"A lot of these decisions about the campaign will be made this week," Romney said.

There has been also been widespread speculation in GOP circles that Charlie Black, a veteran and well-respected Republican operative, would lead the team considering potential running-mates, but Black says he’s not involved.

“I have not and do not expect to be involved in it,” he told BuzzFeed. “[It’s] usually a job for lawyers.”

The shadow of the Palin pick is undoubtedly weighing on Romney’s team.

“Because of 2008, there will be no slack given on the preparedness question,” Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s campaign manager, told BuzzFeed.

Republican operatives say that Romney will have to vet his running-mate more deeply than ever done before.

“It’s not going to be pretty,” said Rick Wilson. “It’s not only about whether they paid their taxes, but are they ready to face the cameras and have they ever said anything that get used in an ad. You never had to deal with this YouTube archive before.”

"In this hyper-connected Internet world, what passed for vetting a few years ago is now grossly inadequate," he said.

LINK: UPDATE: Gillespie denies leading VP search

Romney greet supporters at his Illinois victory party.

Via: Scott Olson / Getty Images

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — Mitt Romney's Illinois blowout may have marked the end of the Republican nomination race, but his opponents have vowed to fight another day — a fact that could haunt him come November.

At this point, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich no longer pose a realistic threat to Romney's delegate lead. By the Associated Press's count, the frontrunner only needs to secure about 45 percent of the remaning delegates to clinch the nomination: Santorum would need over 70 percent.

But the stubborn insistence by Santorum and Gingrich to stay in the race regardless of the math — with both hanging hopes of an upset on the unlikely prospect of a brokered Republican convention — could start to have general election consequences for Romney. A significant portion of the GOP base that has spent months viewing Romney as a political villain: a RINO, a flip-flopper, a "Massachusetts moderate," or any other number of terms his rivals have used to attack him.

The longer Santorum stays in the race hurling those attacks, the harder it will be for his most active supporters to eventually direct their enthusiasm toward electing Romney when reality sets in. A core of true believers in Santorum's candidacy are becoming more invested in with each passing day, setting them up for a greater letdown when he drops out.

Of course, Republicans are quick to point to Barack Obama's success after a long, nasty primary fight with Hillary Clinton as evidence that Romney will do just fine in the fall. But in a party whose base is characterized by its demand for ideological purity, Romney — whose core weakness is an apparent lack of any ideology at all — will face a tougher time winning over Republican detractors than Obama did in coalescing the Clintonites.

The Illinois primary made Romney's "inevitability" stronger than ever for pundits and political analysts — but he has yet to convince his opponents. The longer it takes for them to come around, the harder it will be for Romney to rally their fans in the general election.

With Zeke Miller in SchAumburg and McKay Coppins in New York.

ROYAL OAK, Michigan—Stuart Stevens, one of Mitt Romney's top advisers, predicted a victory for his candidate in Michigan—and added that Romney would beat both of his main opponents on their home turf.

"I'll tell you what," he told reporters, "we'll win both of their home states too."

Asked if he was predicting a win in Georgia—the state Gingrich represented in Congress, and one where he currently holds a narrow lead in some polls—Stevens clarified: "No, I mean Virginia, where he owns a house, and is registered to vote."

Via: Reuters

DETROIT, Michigan — It was supposed to be an iconic campaign moment: Michigan's native son comes to one of the country's most depressed cities, stands in a cavernous football stadium, and gives an agenda-setting address designed to assure his would-be constituents that he's here to save the day.

What took place here, instead, was perhaps the least populist stadium speech ever given. The seats were empty, with the candidate standing on a stage at the 30-yard line while attendees—all local business leaders wearing suits, ties, and pleated skirt —applauded tepidly as he ran through his standard economic talking points.

Romney even tried to manage expectations for the setting, starting his address with a reference to the barbecue waiting in a room off the field.

"I guess it is noon. I hate standing between you and your lunch," he said. "But I want to talk about policy today. This is not exciting and barn-burning, but it’s, uh, it’s important."

The event was, in many ways, a metaphor for Romney's decidedly un-Reaganlike campaign, one that exists in bullet points and statistics, and has always struggled for a grand vision. There's no "change we can believe in," or "morning in America" in Romney's effort, no unifying theme that turns his well-researched talking points into a rallying cry.

Friday's speech did little to change that.

Romney offered virtually no new information in the speech, which had been billed as a major policy address, and merely repeated the highlights of the tax plan he outlined earlier this week. At times, he appeared veer back to his stump speech, looking down at his notes as though his teleprompters was malfunctioning.

On television, the whole affair looked stunted and oddly quiet—with a backdrop of tens of thousands of empty stadium seats coming into view every time the cameras cut away. On the field it wasn't much better: organizers didn't even fill every seat arranged in front of the stage.

At one point, Romney acknowledged the wealth of those in attendance.

“There will be some changes in current deductions for higher income Americans,” Romney said, pointing to the people in the chairs.

The campaign has often criticized the lofty rhetoric of President Obama, and the "grandiosity" of Newt Gingrich. But here, in an undeniably symbolic setting where the stakes were high, Romney could have used some altitude—some soaring lines to make the evening news.

Instead, after the event, reporters were preoccupied with one of the only new things he said: a mention of what he has in his garage.

"I like the fact that most of the cars i see are Detroit-made automobiles," he said of Michigan. "I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs. I used to have a dodge truck, so I used to have all three covered."

Forget Sparta and Athens. The 2012 presidential race is shaping up to be a battle between Sparta and Sparta.

If Mitt Romney is able to overcome Tuesday night’s caucus disappointments and win the GOP nod, the Obama/Romney general election match-up will feature two very similar campaign empires—both flush with cash and stacked with their party’s best political operatives—going to battle with the same instincts, same skill sets, and very similar battle plans.

“Both are big, disciplined, ruthlessly efficient enterprises,” said Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “Obama is not very good at being president, but he is relentless at wanting to be president. Romney’s campaign is similarly like a bulldozer. It overwhelms opponents tactically, with money, TV, and power, crushing movable objects with irresistible force.”

The similarities are partly the fruits of imitation. The Obama campaign in 2008 redefined presidential campaigning and organizing for the Internet era, and elements of Romney's campaign (like most this cycle), from his streamlined logo to the one-upsmanship of his online fundraisers, have a touch of homage. People involved in Romney's Internet operation in particular will, when pressed, concede a grudging respect for their counterparts in Chicago.

But there are more straightforward similarities as well. Both operations are located in second cities—Romney’s in Boston, and Obama’s in Chicago—where the campaigns have tried to co-opt the local color to lend their efforts an air of authenticity. (For proof, follow the Twitter feeds of either campaign’s operatives during Bulls or Celtics games.)

And while neither campaign is headquartered in D.C., they’re each loaded with practiced Washington hands. The officials’ experience has eliminated most of the kinks and leaks that dog more amateur operations, and each campaign is run like a kind of soulless machine — devoid of spontaneity, and utterly allergic to anything that takes them off message. Take, for example, the Romney camp's firing of debate coach Brett O’Donnell after he got too much credit in the press for the candidate’s game-changing Florida debate performances.

With former newspaper reporters near the top— former Boston Herald writer Eric Fehrnstrom with Romney, former Chicago Tribune City Hall bureau chief David Axelrod with Obama—the campaigns share a similarly distant, transactional relationship with the press that belies their familiarity with journalistic mischief.

Team Romney’s stingy record of access to the candidate, dubbed the “Mittness Protection Program,” has led Romney to go several days without taking reporters’ questions. Obama, meanwhile, uses technology to avoid the White House press corps. (He’s held just 17 press conferences in his first term, more than President George W. Bush, but less than Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan at similar points in their administrations.

While reporters complain about being shut out, the shared media strategy is relentlessly effective, said Peter Daou, a senior communications staffer on Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign.

"The Romney campaign is adept at rolling out endorsements at exactly the right time, trying to step on their opponents' message...and being able to dominate the news cycle or grab it back if they feel like it's time," Daou said. "Clearly, that's something they learned from the Obama campaign."

“Both are corporate campaigns,” said Castellanos. “It is incredibly difficult to build overnight huge, multi-million dollar enterprises, businesses the size of major companies, and make them run efficiently. Both have demonstrated the ability to do that... and both campaigns have built cults around their candidates, seeing them as transformational leaders.”

But for all the campaigns’ similarities, the two candidates at the top couldn’t be more different in their management styles.

Staffers say Romney approaches politics with the same deliberate decision-making that made him a star in the investment consulting world. He crunches the numbers, then confidently makes his best bet supported by the data. To him, running a presidential campaign—like running anything else—comes down to simply math.

Obama, on the other hand, spent much of his adult life in law schools and legislatures, where a premium is put on thorough, nuanced intellectual debate. According to insider White House accounts like Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men, Obama likes to spends hours, and even days, debating tough issues with staff before eventually clearing the room and noodling out a decision based on the best arguments he’s heard.

“To make a good movie, my Hollywood friends tell me, you want the hero and villain to be similar as possible, not as different as imaginable, because they are ultimately fighting for the same thing: money, power, or the girl,” Castellanos said. “[Obama and Romney] just come at the same goal from different directions. We are making a very good movie in 2012.”

A Romney/Obama race would certainly depart from 2008, when John McCain’s by-the-seat-of-the-pants campaign kept Chicago—and the American public—guessing at what he’d do each day. Romney, by contrast, would likely never consider McCain’s Sarah Palin gambit: a high-risk, high-reward veep pick would be anathema to his consultant roots.

A preview of the upcoming battle came last week, as the web teams for both campaigns sought to one-up each other with dueling online fundraisers. The Romney campaign launched the “one-term fund” to raise $1 million, which was quickly followed by Obama’s “two-term fund” to raise $2 million. Romney’s team then held up the Obama response as an example that the president is focused on campaigning instead of government — tacitly acknowledging that the Obama fundraising machine had won the day.

In another glimpse of the campaign to come, the candidates' respective messaging gurus, Fehrnstrom and Axelrod, have often taken to Twitter to needle each other for the entire political press to see — and, of course, write about. Take, for instance, this exchange that took place last month, days before the South Carolina primary:

The two went back and forth like this for a while, exchanging barbs and statistics like two students who were trained by the same debate coach. They ended like this:

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