Sarah Palin, who recently endorsed Texas senate candidate Ted Cruz in a competitive GOP primary, has started to make robocalls for the Tea Party-backed challenger -- and, reportedly, some of those calls are going out in the wrong state.

According to the Topeka Capital-Journal's Tim Carpenter, Palin's recorded calls have been dispatched in Kansas. While the call begins with a cheerful "Hello, Texas!" greeting from Palin, Carpenter reported Sunday that he had received the message while at his office at the Topeka newspaper, hundreds of miles from the Lone Star State's border.

The call, excerpted in the above video, highlights Cruz's Tea Party affiliation and commitment to conservatism.

Palin endorsed Cruz, the former Texas Solicitor General, earlier this month. HuffPost reported:

"We’re proud to join conservatives in Texas and throughout the nation in supporting your campaign to become the next senator from the Lone Star State," Palin wrote in response to a letter from Cruz, according to his campaign. “Your conservative principles, passionate defense of our Constitution and our free market system come at a time when these cornerstones of our freedom and prosperity are under attack. Our shared goal isn’t just to change the majority in control of the Senate, but to assure principled conservatives like you are there to fight for us.”

Cruz, who also won endorsements from Ron and Rand Paul, said he was honored to have Palin's support, calling her an inspiration to conservatives nationwide.

The former Alaska governor's support of Cruz is the latest in a string of endorsements she has made in tough Republican primaries. Palin made a similar statement of support for Nebraska's Deb Fischer, who won the GOP nomination to the surprise of many last week.

Texas' primary is on Tuesday, May 29. The crowded GOP nomination field includes frontrunner Lt. Governor David Dewhurst and former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert. Cruz and his competitors are vying to succeed Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the Republican senator who announced plans to retire last year.

Lee Habeeb, National Review
She didn’t see it coming. One day, Oprah Winfrey turned around, and her nationally syndicated show was sliding in the ratings, and her audience was fleeing en masse. And it happened soon after a day she thought was one of the best in her life.Isn’t that how all the giants fall? When they least expect it?It was the day Oprah announced she was backing the African-American candidate, then-senator Barack Obama, over the highly qualified and experienced woman candidate, then-senator Hillary Clinton.

BOSTON -- Massachusetts Republicans Mitt Romney and Scott Brown have a history of supporting each other throughout their political careers.

But with each facing a tough election, neither the presidential candidate nor the U.S. senator is playing up that history, perhaps with good reason.

Brown, trying to win re-election in one of the most Democratic states, spends much of his time promoting his bipartisan bona fides and describing himself as a "Scott Brown Republican" rather than a conservative or liberal Republican.

He may be one of the few Republicans running who boasts of working with President Barack Obama to pass bills. On his campaign website, Brown has posted pictures and videos of him with the Democratic incumbent.

Romney has moved increasingly to the right, shedding some of the more moderate positions he held as Massachusetts governor as he worked to rally GOP activists during the primaries.

As Brown took a more moderate stance, he alienated some of the conservative and tea party activists who helped elect him in 2010. Those are the same people Romney will need if he hopes to win in November. Brown's shift to the middle could make him a liability for Romney among conservatives.

Brown probably will continue to play down his ties to his former governor and emphasize his own independent streak, particularly with recent polls showing Obama enjoying a double-digit over Romney in Massachusetts.

"Brown sees pretty clearly that there are no Romney coattails in Massachusetts for him to ride and, indeed, being close to Romney for his own re-election bid could be a liability," said Paul Watanabe, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts.

The distance between the candidates is more than strategic. Romney and Brown have adopted competing views on several big issues, from a new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia to the fate of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Romney has said Roe v. Wade should be reversed. Brown says a woman should have the right to an abortion, although he opposes federal money for the procedure. Brown voted for the new START treaty with Russia, saying it was important for national security. Romney said the treaty was Obama's "worst foreign policy mistake."

The differences don't stop there.

Romney has called for repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law. Brown voted for it. Romney backs amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. Brown opposes such an amendment and says gay marriage is "settled law" in Massachusetts. Such unions became legal in the state in 2003.

Romney, in 2007, said the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy seemed to be working. Brown voted with Democrats and some Republicans to end the policy that barred gays from serving openly in the military, earning praise from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group.

While Romney hasn't said if he'll release more than two years of his income tax returns, Brown has made public six years of his tax documents.

When pressed on the differences of opinion, Brown's campaign repeats his endorsement of Romney.

"Sen. Brown thinks Mitt Romney is a good and decent person who is devoted to his family and strong on jobs and the economy and that's why he supports him for president," Brown spokesman Colin Reed said in a statement.

The campaigns also share staff, including Eric Fehrnstrom, a top political adviser to both men. Fehrnstrom did not respond to a request for comment.

Romney and Brown come from very different backgrounds. Brown's parents divorced early and his family moved often when he was young. Romney's father was a governor of Michigan and an automotive executive. Still, the two found political common ground nearly a decade ago.

Both are ambitious Republicans from a state known for frustrating GOP hopes.

When a seat opened up in the state Senate in 2004, Brown, then a state representative, jumped into the race. The seat had been held by a Democrat but, with a campaigning and fundraising assist from then-Gov. Romney, Brown squeaked out a narrow victory over his Democratic challenger, who at first doubted the results.

"It's a new day in Massachusetts politics when the Democrats are calling for a recount," said Romney, who appeared at a Statehouse news conference with Brown after the election.

When longtime Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died of brain cancer in 2009, Romney supported Brown in the special election to fill the seat. Though Brown was considered a long shot, Romney issued campaign fundraising letters on his behalf.

"Scott's election would shock the country," Romney wrote. "Wouldn't it be nice to elect a fiscal conservative to Ted Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate?" Romney had challenged Kennedy for the seat in 1994, and lost.

The mutual accolades reached a pinnacle at an annual meeting of conservative activists the month after Brown's election to the U.S. Senate.

Introducing Romney, Brown joked that at the start of his Senate campaign "I could have held my campaign rally in a phone booth" and Romney was "one of those guys who was in that phone booth with me."

Romney returned the compliment moments later.

"Scott Brown, boy, I'd take him anywhere I could take him," he told the crowd.

Except that neither has taken the other anywhere lately.

Democrats are busy trying to make voters aware of the ties between Romney and Brown, especially in Massachusetts, where Brown faces a tough fight against likely Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren.

Democrats note that Romney and Brown both supported an amendment in the U.S. Senate this year that would have allowed employers or health insurers to deny coverage for services they said violated their moral or religious beliefs, including birth control. The amendment failed.

"Scott Brown and Mitt Romney have made clear that they share a close personal relationship as Massachusetts Republicans," state Democratic Party spokesman Kevin Franck said in a statement. "They share the same policy agenda of protecting tax breaks for big oil and millionaires, while refusing to invest in helping the middle class."

Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard
For our part, we’d like to see a decisive triumph for Romney and his running mate over two formidable representatives of contemporary liberalism, rather than a discounted victory over a flawed ticket with only one strong candidate. So we sincerely suggest to President Obama: Dump Joe Biden. We’re sure the thought has occurred to the president. He knows his undisciplined vice president did him no service by popping off about same-sex marriage on Meet the Press, thereby forcing Obama to engage the issue prematurely. Instead of making his announcement of his...

Jamelle Bouie, American Prospect
The defining feature of the Republican presidential primaries was the constant Sturm und Drang over Mitt Romney’s ability to win Republican voters. Pundits claimed that Romney had a “ceiling” with conservatives in the party, and opponents like former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum routinely assailed the front-runner as a candidate whose commitment to conservatism was short-lived and inauthentic—a human “Etch A Sketch,” in the words of Romney’s own campaign spokesperson. But when Romney locked up the nomination...

MIAMI -- Sen. Marco Rubio has close ties to a colleague accused of questionable financial dealings. The freshman senator also once was enmeshed in a controversy over the use of the state party's credit card for his personal expenses. And he has faced increased scrutiny over his personal background since bursting onto the national political scene, including conflicting details of his parents' immigration from Cuba and his recently disclosed ties to the Mormon faith.

Will issues like those in Rubio's personal and political background hold back one of the GOP's fastest-rising stars? That's a question being debated in Republican circles in Washington, Florida and elsewhere as the Cuban-American senator with solid conservative credentials works to raise his profile beyond Florida, if not position himself for a national role within the GOP.

"Marco Rubio is a huge star in the Republican Party in much the same way that Barack Obama was in the Democratic Party between his convention speech in 2004 and his candidacy for the president," said Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "There are a lot of plusses when you look at Marco Rubio as a potential vice presidential candidate, but there are also unknowns."

Rubio, who all but certainly has political aspirations that extend beyond the Senate, frequently is mentioned by Republican insiders as an attractive candidate to be Mitt Romney's running mate partly because the party needs to attract Hispanic voters in battleground states like Nevada and Florida in November.

While Rubio denies any interest in the No. 2 slot on the ticket this year, he's working hard to stay in the national spotlight. He recently gave a major foreign policy address in Washington, he's talking about writing a bill to allow some young illegal immigrants to remain and work in the country without citizenship, and next month he'll release a memoir.

The country is only just starting to get to know Rubio and his political vulnerabilities, though Florida residents know both well.

Rubio's relationship with fellow freshman lawmaker Rep. David Rivera, now facing a federal probe into tax evasion, and the credit card controversy surfaced during his 2010 Senate campaign. And they didn't have much effect. But that doesn't mean the country as a whole would overlook those eyebrow-raising issues.

"Floridians may be numb to these hits because of the rough-and-tumble nature of politics in the state, when it's looked at by a national audience it may not be as palatable," said Abe Dyk, a political strategist who managed the 2010 Senate campaign of Rubio's Democratic challenger.

Rubio and Rivera met in 1992, during the campaign of former Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a fellow South Florida Cuban-American. The two rose through the ranks in the statehouse with Rivera oftentimes playing bad cop to the more congenial Rubio.

During the legislative session, they shared a Tallahassee townhouse, which a bank began foreclosure proceedings on in 2010. Rubio made only partial payments on that mortgage for five months in 2010, even as he held jobs as a consultant, professor and TV commentator. He has said the missed payments were due to a dispute over the terms of the mortgage.

State officials closed a criminal probe into Rivera's personal financial dealings without filing charges but didn't clear him entirely. They cited Florida's brief statute of limitations and its lax campaign finance laws for not charging him with living off of his campaign funds and failing to disclose his income.

In the last year, Rubio has publicly kept some distance from Rivera and has said that his friend has some issues he must address on the campaign trail. Still, Rubio threw a small Washington fundraiser for Rivera last week. So far, Rubio hasn't faced blowback from his friendship with Rivera.

"It's tough to say how that will play out," says Emilio Gonzalez, a consultant who served in the Bush administration and sees Rubio as a potentially formidable presidential candidate in 2016.

If Rubio were to end up on the GOP presidential ticket or mount his own national campaign in the coming years, he all but certainly would face questions about the scandal over the use of state GOP funds when he was the speaker of the Florida House.

The head of the party, Jim Greer, was forced to resign following revelations he and his second-in-command charged $1.5 million on party credit cards, much of it on luxurious hotels, fancy restaurants, chauffeured sedans and lavish entertaining. Greer's trial is set to start July 30, just ahead of the Republican convention, and many Republican observers anticipate he will detail unethical use of party money by other high-ranking GOP officials.

Rubio himself spent more than $100,000 on the party card between 2006 and 2008, paying off about $16,000 in personal expenses and claiming the rest as official party business. His records from 2005, when he was lobbying to become Florida House speaker, never were released. When asked about using the party card for personal expenses, Rubio has said he sometimes just pulled the wrong card out of his wallet and he has called it a "lesson learned."

He also has had to answer criticism for how he spent money donated to two political committees he formed - including payments to relatives. He has acknowledged the bookkeeping for at least one of the accounts was sloppy.

And then there's the fuzziness around his family's background.

Rubio long claimed his parents fled Fidel Castro's regime. But it was recently disclosed that they arrived several years before Castro took power – although they quickly embraced the Cuban exile community as Castro turned toward communism. Rubio has said the dates he gave were based on his parents' recollections.

There's another part of Rubio's upbringing that long had gone undisclosed, and the revelation is one that could turn off evangelicals who make up the base of the GOP.

Rubio was baptized as Mormon when his family lived for a few years in Las Vegas, thanks to the influence of cousins who belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Rubio returned to the Catholic Church as a young teen, and as an adult he has also frequently attended Baptist services.

When it comes to the vice presidency, Rubio's greatest liability may be one only time can resolve.

"I suspect that the Romney campaign is going to pick someone who is viewed as unquestionably qualified for the office," said Schmidt, who was intimately involved in McCain's selection of Sarah Palin. "To the extent that (Rubio's) in his first term, he's in the first two years of his term and he's 40 years old probably doesn't help him."

___

Farrington reported from Tallahassee, Fla.

Follow Laura Wides-Munoz on Twitter: (at)lwmunoz

So, it's official. Disco is dead. The passing of Donna Summer brings to a close an era in American music that... well... if you didn't live through it, it's hard to explain. Especially the outfits people wore in public. And making John Travolta a movie star (although he did atone somewhat, by genuflecting to the 1950s immediately thereafter, in Grease).

Music history aside, it was a somewhat eclectic week in politics. The House -- in one of their rare moments when they actually meet and attempt to get something done -- passed a bunch of bills which have exactly zero chance of becoming law. Well, at least they had fun, right? Republicans were doing their usual clown routine out on the campaign trail, including questioning Obama's commitment to America and (once again) his birth certificate.

Sigh. The more things change, the more the clown makeup remains the same, I suppose. On a lighter note in clowning around, it seems arriving at a red carpet in a dog crate on top of a car is now chic. Heh.

Chicago is about to become "Protest Central" this weekend, for a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The G-8 meeting was also supposed to have happened in Chicago, but was instead hastily whisked away to Camp David in the Maryland mountains, where popular protest is impossible (Camp David is definitely not a "free speech zone," to put it in Orwellian terms). This likely won't deflate the balloon of protest in the Windy City, but we'll all just have to see what happens over the weekend.

House Republicans passed a budget bill which hikes spending further than what they already agreed to -- yes, you read that right, Republicans are spending too much money -- because it is the one budget item that they'll never ever consider cutting: the Pentagon. They'll happily slash money for the poor, for the retired, and for the hungry... as long as we can build Ronald Reagan's missile defense system to protect us against the Soviet Union (which, someone really ought to tell Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republicans, no longer actually exists).

Americans Elect suffered a spectacular failure this week. These were the Wall Street kids who wanted to play in the big presidential sandbox, by buying ballot access in all 50 states so that they could run a "balanced ticket" of one moderate Republican and one moderate Democrat. However, it seems Americans aren't all that interested in the pipe dream of the Beltway chattering class for some sort of non-partisan "centrist" ticket, and not enough people voted online for anyone -- not even, astonishingly enough, Ron Paul -- for them to qualify for the next round of voting. C'mon, guys, just end the window-dressing attempts and go ahead and offer the ballot access you've already won (in over half the states) to Michael Bloomberg, which was really the whole reason you created this fake-grassroots movement in the first place, OK? Stop pretending you weren't going to do this anyway, and just jump in with both feet.

Enough of this looking backward, though, let's move forward to the rest of this week's nonsense.

 

We've got to award an early Honorable Mention to all the folks in Wisconsin who are working hard to recall their odious governor. The matter is still very much up in the air, and the election is right around the corner. Wisconsin groups are doing the best they can with what they've got, and a story leaked out that they were a bit miffed at the lack of support from the national Democrats for their campaign. Since then, fundraisers have been announced, and support seems to now be a bit more forthcoming.

This is a big deal, not only for the people of Wisconsin, but on the national level, as well. This election is going to happen long before November, and it will be read as having national implications no matter which way the chips fall. If the recall fails, Republicans will crow and push anti-worker legislation even harder at the state level. If the recall succeeds, Democrats will chalk up a huge victory (only the third governor ever recalled in American history), and feel the wind beneath their wings nationally. So it really behooves Democrats in Washington to support this effort to the hilt, because the stakes are much larger than just one state.

But we have two Most Impressive Democrat of the Week awards this week, for Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey, who introduced a populist-anger bill they charmingly titled the "Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy" Act, or (... wait for it... drumroll...) the "Ex-PATRIOT Act." This measure was introduced over the outrage at the news that one of Facebook's founders, Eduardo Saverin, renounced his American citizenship to avoid paying taxes -- right before his company was about to go public. Not only was the bill appropriately named (for once -- Democrats usually aren't so good at this sort of thing), but Schumer got off a great line explaining the bill: "Eduardo Saverin wants to defriend the United States of America just to avoid paying taxes. We aren't going to let him get away with it." Good one, Chuck -- nice use of "defriend," there. Heh.

Whether the bill succeeds or not, it was a nice political stunt to see. It's easy to work up some populist outrage against this sort of thing, because it taps into what it means to be an American -- and also the differences between how an average American views his or her citizenship and how a billionaire views the same thing. It's not only a 99% argument, it is actually a 99.99% argument. And it's not often Democrats get to push the "American exceptionalism" button in such a fashion.

Schumer and Casey's timing was excellent, too -- because Facebook is guaranteed to be the top story in today's news. If I might be allowed to mix a few metaphors, it was striking while the iron was hot and using the sparks to light a fire in some political hay.

OK, maybe that was just a little too over the top, sorry for the lapse. It won't happen again. Well, at least not until the talking points.

Seriously, though, this sort of tactic is usually used quite well by Republicans, and usually bungled when Democrats attempt it. But it has to be said, Schumer and Casey did an excellent job this time. The move by Saverin is so outrageous that it is impossible to politically defend by anyone. The only question is whether the media takes note or not.

For their efforts, and for so successfully playing this political card, Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey are this week's two Most Impressive Democrat of the Week award winners.

[Congratulate Senator Bob Casey on his Senate contact page, and Senator Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]

 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently woke up this week and realized that the Republicans are abusing the filibuster in the chamber he is supposed to be running. Oh, sure, progressive Democrats had begged him to reform the filibuster rules back when they had a chance to -- with a simple majority vote -- over a year ago, but Harry wasn't convinced, back then. Now he has realized his mistake, and publicly said so on the Senate floor.

Well, good for you, Harry! It's a day late and a dollar short, but we always like to see people evolve in the right direction, politically. Maybe next time, you should listen a bit harder when progressive Democrats come a-knockin' at your door.

Since we can't very well hand Reid even a (Dis-)Honorable Mention for seeing the light, we will just mention it in passing and move right along.

Instead, we have to look back four weeks ago to find our Most Disappointing Democrat of the Week for this week, down in North Carolina. Back then, we handed out only a (Dis-)Honorable Mention to state party chairman David Parker. Parker was charged with badly handling a sexual harassment scandal against a state party official (not Parker himself), and the only reason he didn't get a MDDOTW was because Parker did the right thing, and handed in his resignation.

Now the news comes that the party committee who hires the party chairman actually voted to reject his resignation and reinstate him, much to the embarrassment of many Democrats -- especially those concerned with the upcoming national Democratic convention to be held in the state in only a few months' time. Parker then "unresigned" and accepted his job back.

So we've got a Most Disappointing Democrat of the Week not only for David Parker, but also for the Democratic Executive Committee of North Carolina. This is not what we need right now, folks. Parker himself, speaking to the press, summed the situation up much better than we could ever hope to do: "Well you crazy people, is this the Democratic Party or what?"

Sigh. Or what, indeed.

[Contact North Carolina Democratic Chairman David Parker on his official profile page (email address at bottom), and the North Carolina Democratic Party on their official contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]

 

Volume 211 (5/18/12)

Kind of a grab bag of talking points this week. As always, these are offered up to be used by all and sundry to advance the Democrats' positions and frame the issues the way they truly should be framed. Whether you're a politician on a Sunday morning chat show or just a guy hanging around the water cooler at work, try a few of these out in the coming week.

 

   Home-grown austerity

This is such an obvious one, I'm actually surprised nobody else seems to have thought about it. Why use a different term for Europe and the U.S., after all?

"Republicans' plans for our economy can be summed up as more budget cuts, all the time. But you know, we have a word for that sort of thing, when talking about other countries: austerity. The Republicans want to slash budgets with a meat axe, and impose austerity measures on every part of society except the wealthiest one percent, who somehow are exempt from all of this austerity. But you know what? They should take a look at Europe and see how austerity on steroids is working for them over there. America faced the financial crisis and passed Obama's plan. Europe went all-austerity-all-the-time. Guess which economy is growing now? Ours. We don't need to travel the road Europe is traveling, but if the Republicans get all the austerity they are hoping for, that's exactly what will happen."

 

   Do you really want to go there, Mitt?

This one is also pathetically easy to connect the dots, one would think.

"I see that the people trying to elect Mitt Romney have been considering using Jeremiah Wright ads against President Obama. My question is: Do you really want to go there, Mitt? Do you really want to set the standard for attacks on a candidate's religion? Perhaps you are unaware of American history -- I would suggest you look up the Senate hearings on seating Reed Smoot, of Utah. A century ago, the United States Senate spent years taking 3,500 pages of testimony from 100 witnesses on every aspect of Mormonism they could think up questions to ask about. Do you really want to declare that we've returned to that era, Mitt? Personally, I thought America had evolved a bit since then, but you've already brought up Reverend Wright in an interview, so I guess you've decided that a candidate's religion is fair game. That's sad, and it's disappointing."

 

   Republican War on Women continues

Once again, it's not even the odious laws which place the government between a woman and her doctor, but it's just the sheer disrespect Republicans can't help but showing in the process.

"House Republicans just barred a woman from testifying in a committee, once again. This time it was a stringent abortion law they wanted to impose on the District of Columbia, and the Republicans refused to extend a common courtesy the House normally shows to their own members. The House member from D.C., Eleanor Holmes Norton, was denied an opportunity to address the committee on a law which targets her district -- even though such testimony is normally allowed. It's not so much a bunch of old men trying to get between a woman and her doctor, as it is about basic respect -- and you can bet women voters are noticing this sort of thing."

 

   Partisan games before women

GOP War on Women, continued...

"Instead of passing the bipartisan Senate version of the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, the House Republicans decided to play politics with the bill instead, to water down protections for women against violence. They are putting their own partisan gamesmanship ahead of protecting women, and I find it disgusting. Every other time the VAWA came up for renewal in the past, it would garner a bipartisan vote in both houses. This time around, the Senate passed it with a large bipartisan vote. But the House Republicans would rather play politics on a version of the bill which President Obama has already said he will veto, rather than joining with their Senate Republican counterparts in putting something in this country -- anything, in fact -- before their own desire to play partisan games. Shame on them for doing so!"

 

   JP Morgan's near meltdown

Knock this one out of the park, while the iron's hot. Or, choose your own mixed metaphor -- but get this message out there.

"Republicans have been arguing for years that there's too much 'regulation' on Wall Street -- even after they almost destroyed the American economy because of little or no regulation on the insane risks Wall Street was taking. Republicans tell us over and over again, 'Just let Wall Street run like a casino -- it'll be no problem, because they'll regulate themselves.' This is hogwash, and what we are witnessing at JP Morgan should be seen as a canary in the coal mine. The Dodd-Frank regulations that Democrats passed have not been fully implemented yet. The regulations are still being written, and at every turn Wall Street bankers and their Republican buddies have been blocking everything they can, so that commonsense rules aren't applied to them. The Republicans fighting against these rules should take a long, hard look at JP Morgan -- which has paid millions to lobby against the rules -- and ask themselves if that is really what they want to encourage Wall Street to do again. Wasn't one financial crash enough for them? Then why are they bending so far over backwards to facilitate another?"

 

   Bain-ful

The Obama reelection team fired a salvo against Romney's experience at Bain Capital this week. This is smart politics, and we are likely to see more of it soon. Romney is perceived by the public as being some sort of financial private-sector guru who knows what to do about the American economy. Obama began to launch a full-scale frontal attack on this perception, which is good news. I have to admit, the core of this particular talking point came from an excellent blog post by Robert Creamer at The Huffington Post.

"Mitt Romney says he knows how to create jobs because of his private-sector experience at Bain Capital. But nothing could be further from the truth. Bain is not in the business of 'creating jobs' -- they are in the business of 'creating wealth' for their shareholders. They take over a business and use accounting tricks to insure that Bain makes money no matter what happens to the company. Sometimes the company does well, and hires people. Sometimes it goes bust, and lays everybody off. In either case, Bain walks away with millions of dollars. This is the experience Mitt Romney is supposed to bring to the White House? No wonder he pals around with people like Meg Whitman, whose own company is about to lay off over 30,000 people. Do you think Meg's salary goes down one dollar for destroying these jobs under her watch? Nope. That's the world these people live in -- whether the company and the jobs survive or not, they continue to line their pockets. America simply can't afford someone with this sort of outlook in charge of our economy. It would be an unmitigated disaster."

 

   Good enough for me, good enough for my money

This one may cross some sort of line. Then again, it may not. Innocent deniability is the way to go, should Mitt Romney's name come up in response. You have to refrain from throwing in items like "an elevator for my cars" for this to work, however.

"I personally find it astounding that any sane person would voluntarily give up their American citizenship for any reason, and to hear someone do it just to save money is flat-out disgusting to me. These people live in a different world, apparently. They own multiple houses all over the world, they treat national borders as some sort of inconvenience, and they seek tax havens where they can live with others of the tiny fraction of the one percent who can afford such luxuries as a fluid concept of citizenship and national pride. As I said, to me this is outrageous, but then I've never had millions of dollars in a Cayman Islands or Swiss bank account, so I guess I see things differently. But I do know one thing: you could not pay me enough money to ever -- ever -- give up my American citizenship for any reason whatsoever. America's good enough for me, and it's good enough for me to keep my money in, as well."

 

Chris Weigant blogs at:

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Become a fan of Chris on Huffington Post
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank

 

The Truth-o-Meter says: Full Flop | Mitt Romney rejected state tax pledge before signing national one

These days, it’s hard for candidates to claim they truly oppose taxes if they haven’t put it in writing. As a presidential candidate in 2012, Mitt Romney signed a pledge to forswear tax increases. In fact, in his official tax proposal, Romney has advocated across-the-board tax cuts. But has he been consistent over the years about putting his commitment not to raise taxes in the form of a pledge? The question about Romney and the tax pledge was raised in late 2007, when the Democratic National Committee released a ...

>> More

Alex Roarty, National Journal
In this Nov. 4, 2008 file photo, young supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voice their support for him early on election day in New York. The day was a huge moment for Obama with some saying it was a defining moment for a generation of youth who played a key role in electing him. By Alex RoartyThe Great Recession took a sledgehammer to young job-seekers. As a Rutgers University study released this week reported, only half -- 51 percent -- of college graduates since 2006 are employed full-time. Eleven percent of them, the study found, are unemployed -- a...

Flying in the face of the national trend in favor of same-sex marriage, Indiana Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg announced his support of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages and civil unions on the same day President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. Gregg's Republican opponent, far-right Congressman Mike Pence, also supports the discriminatory amendment. Libertarian candidate Rupert Boneham, the former Survivor reality show star, has already announced his support of full marriage equality for all Hoosiers.

The entire national Democratic leadership reiterated their support for LGBT equality this week, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, Senate leaders Harry Reid and Richard Durbin, as well as the heads of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The party is also expected to include a plank in their national platform to support marriage equality.

"John believes that everyone should be treated with respect and dignity," said campaign spokesperson Megan Jacobs over email. "However, he also believes that marriage is between a man and a woman and does not support legalizing gay marriage. John doesn't base his policy positions on polling numbers or on what national Democrats are saying. His personal belief is that marriage is between a man and a woman and he's not going to change any of his beliefs because it's politically expedient." Jacobs refused to answer whether or not Gregg supported civil unions or domestic partner benefits.

"I just don't get it," said Boneham in reaction to Gregg's announcement. "I don't understand why they are so hostile to committed consenting adults getting the same legal protections and benefits as everyone else. I'm not just making empty statements about supporting LGBT Hoosiers. I've been saying publicly that I will fight for marriage equality in Indiana. I will put everything I've got into defeating this bigoted amendment and then I will focus in on repealing Indiana DoMA."

He continued: "The protections in the Indiana and U.S. Constitutions apply to each and every one of us. We aren't supposed to have second class citizens in this country and we won't stand by and allow there to be second class Hoosiers."

Democratic Base Reacts

Civil rights organizations and some of the candidate's backers were justifiably outraged by Gregg's endorsement of governmental discrimination of a minority group.

"A true commitment to dignity for all demands supporting marriage for same-sex couples," said Human Rights Campaign Vice President of Communications Fred Sainz. "There is no dignity in being unable to make medical decisions for your partner in the hospital, in being unable to immediately place your name on your child's birth certificate, or in being asked to lie to your government on legal documents about your relationship to your spouse. John Gregg does not even have respect for same-sex couples to indicate that he supports a lesser status for same-sex couples such as civil unions."

While the AFL-CIO had previously endorsed Gregg's candidacy, his support for discrimination could put that assistance in jeopardy. Shortly following Gregg's acknowledgement that he endorses bigotry, AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka put out a release saying, "Working people believe in equality and fairness and that's why we are happy to stand with millions of Americans and with President Obama in supporting marriage equality. Most important, we should respect and honor our friends, neighbors, and family members who want to take care of their families and their loved ones -- whatever their sexual orientation. We are proud to come together for a more just America."

"Marriage is not 'defined' by who it's denied to, and government has no business placing obstacles in the path of people seeking to take care of their loved ones," Freedom to Marry President Evan Wolfson commented. Seeking to cement discrimination into the constitution is a shameful failure of leadership for any candidate of any party. There is no 'respect' or 'dignity' in having your family targeted for attack by politicians who are supposed to stand for liberty and justice for all."

LGBT Democrats Respond

Criticism from the Indiana Stonewall Democrats was rather muted, however. While the organization refused to endorse noted anti-gay Senate candidate Brad Ellsworth in the last national election and is currently mulling over whether or not they will support this year's candidate, conservative Congressman Joe Donnelly, they refused to say whether or not Gregg's attack on the LGBT community will disqualify him from endorsement consideration.

"We are thrilled with the president's evolution on this important civil rights issue but recognize that not everyone is there yet," said President Aaron Schaler. "The president has had four plus years to evolve and the LGBT community hopes that with time and conversations that the next governor of Indiana will come to the same conclusion."

"It will be hard for the LGBT community and their supporters to find a statewide voice when it comes to the right of freedom to marry, unfortunately both Democratic and Republican candidates for governor support a constitutional amendment banning the freedom to marry the man or women of choice," he continued. "ISD will be continuing our dialogue with John Gregg about the importance of protections for the LGBT community and the harm that an anti-gay marriage amendment will do to those that do have existing protections through their job or domestic partner benefits."

National Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Jerame Davis, a former Vice President of the Indiana chapter, was not as restrained in expressing his disappointment.

"As a Hoosier ex-patriot and a Democrat, I couldn't be more disappointed in John Gregg's regressive position on the freedom to marry," Davis said. "Staking out the most extreme position possible, Gregg sounds more like his Republican opponent than a principled Democrat. What choice is John Gregg giving equality-minded Hoosiers when he uses the same language and adopts the same position as a rabid culture warrior like Mike Pence?"

Gregg on LGBT and Progressive Issues

Jacobs, however, disagreed that the two candidates' positions were identical on LGBT rights. "The difference between John and Congressman Pence on this issue is that John believes our government in Indiana should be focused on creating job opportunities and improving education, not trying to legislate social issues," she said. "John also supports having strong hate crime legislation which includes members of the LGBT community while Congressman Pence has voted against hate crime legislation twice."

Hate crimes legislation passed nationally in 2009. While Pence voted against passage, Gregg has never served in Congress to have a vote on the record. Further requests for clarification on why Gregg would list his support for an already passed bill went unanswered. During Gregg's tenure as Indiana Speaker of the House, he didn't press for passage of a state-level hate crimes law. The state is one of five that doesn't have its own version of the national law.

Recent polling has shown that over 50 percent of Americans now support gays' and lesbians' freedom to marry. A 2011 poll of Hoosiers found that more voters opposed the proposed amendment than favored it.

Gregg seems to be bucking all of the traditional Democratic base. He has announced his opposition to women's right to choose and refused to condemn the state's new "right to work" law. In response to questions, Gregg has echoed his statement that each is a "divisive issue" and refused to further explain his positions.

A quick look at Gregg's campaign website shows absolutely nothing under the "Issues" section. From the looks of the campaign's recent strategy to alienate the Democratic base, it seems he could easily copy Republican Mike Pence's.

An anonymous former high-school classmate of Mitt Romney's told ABC News on Thursday that many fellow students have "really negative memories" of the Republican presidential candidate, and that his behavior during those years was "like
'Lord of the Flies.'"

The interview came on the heels of a Washington Post report that detailed Romney's behavior as a student at the Cranbrook School, a prestigious institution in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. In the article's most explosive revelation, multiple classmates of Romney's recall how he led a group of students that forcibly cut the hair of John Lauber, a student who was thought to be gay.

Romney countered the allegations quickly, making a surprise appearance on Fox host Brian Kilmeade's radio show Thursday morning.

"They talk about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school," he said. "And they describe some that you just say to yourself, back in high school I just did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by it, obviously I apologize."

“I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far, and for that, I apologize," he added.

Earlier in the interview, Romney said that during his high-school days -- the mid 1960s -- a student's sexual orientation "was the furthest thing from my mind."

Romney's advisers are hoping for backup on those words. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/romney-friend-stu-white-says-campaign-wants-him-to-counter-prank-accusations/" target="_hplink">ABC News reports that his campaign has approached some of the candidate's Cranbrook friends to counter the sometimes harsh image put forth in the Washington Post article.

The 2012 election should be about what's going on in America's boardrooms, but Republicans would rather it be about America's bedrooms.

Mitt Romney says he's against same-sex marriage; President Obama just announced his support. North Carolina voters have approved a Republican-proposed amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage. Minnesota voters will be considering a similar amendment in November. Republicans in Maryland and Washington State are seeking to overturn legislative approval of same-sex marriage there.

Meanwhile, Republicans have introduced over four hundred bills in state legislatures aimed at limiting women's reproductive rights -- banning abortions, requiring women seeking abortions to have invasive ultra-sound tests beforehand, and limiting the use of contraceptives.

The Republican bedroom crowd doesn't want to talk about the nation's boardrooms because that's where most of their campaign money comes from. And their candidate for president has made a fortune playing board rooms like checkers.

Yet America's real problems have nothing to do with what we do in our bedrooms and everything to do with what top executives do in their boardrooms and executive suites.

We're not in trouble because gays want to marry or women want to have some control over when they have babies. We're in trouble because CEOs are collecting exorbitant pay while slicing the pay of average workers, because the titans of Wall Street demand short-term results over long-term jobs, and because of a boardroom culture that tolerates financial conflicts of interest, insider trading, and the outright bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign "donations."

Our crisis has nothing to do with private morality. It's a crisis of public morality -- of abuses of public trust that undermine the integrity of our economy and democracy and have led millions of Americans to conclude the game is rigged.

What's truly immoral is not what adults choose to do with other consenting adults. It's what those with great power have chosen to do to the rest of us.

It is immoral that top executives are richly rewarded no matter how badly they screw up while most Americans are screwed no matter how hard they work.

Regressive Republicans have no problem intruding on the most personal and most intimate decisions any of us makes while railing against government intrusions on big business.

They don't hesitate to hurl the epithets "shameful," "disgraceful," and "contemptible" at private moral decisions they disagree with, while staying stone silent in the face of the most contemptible violations of public trust at the highest reaches of the economy.

We must protect and advance private rights of individuals over intimate bedroom decisions. We must also stop the abuses of economic power and privilege that are characterizing so many decisions in the nation's boardrooms and executive suites.

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

Andy Kroll, Mother Jones
Democrats in Wisconsin are headed to the polls to pick a challenger to face Gov. Scott Walker in his recall election on June 5. The two leading candidates, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk, offer voters a clear-cut choice: Do you pick the candidate who captures the progressive spirit and populist outrage that triggered Walker's recall? Or the one with the best showing in the polls?

LAS VEGAS -- Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is campaigning to win the White House as a Libertarian after receiving scant attention in the Republican presidential race.

Johnson easily became the party's presidential nominee at the Libertarian national convention in Las Vegas on Saturday. He hopes to appeal to voters fed up with the traditional two-party system this November.

Johnson was a longshot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination when he announced in December that he would instead pursue the Libertarian ticket.

He won 74 percent of the vote on the first ballot in Las Vegas, an unusual showing of support. In 2008, Libertarian delegates needed six rounds of voting to pick a presidential nominee.

Johnson supports legalized marijuana, low taxes and immigration reform.

He was elected New Mexico's governor in 1994.

Mark Barabak, LA Times
Is President Obama trying to wedge his way to a second term? The economy will doubtless be the overriding issue in November's presidential contest, and Obama is hardly ignoring it. But a successful candidate appeals to all sorts of voters harboring all sorts of concerns, and the president and his backers appear to be using a pair of wedge issues to target two groups, Latinos and women, with messages grounded more in emotionalism than economics.

Ouch.

Ron Paul's campaign is so downtrodden that the super PAC supporting his candidacy has less cash than former fake presidential candidate Stephen Colbert.

The latest Federal Election Commission filings revealed that Colbert’s super PAC Americans for A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow had $794,462. Endorse Liberty, the pro-Ron Paul group, had only $53,984.

To be fair, since the Comedy Central comedian isn't actually running for president, he hasn't spent nearly as much as Paul campaigning. Still, the Texas congressman only raised $13,104 in March -- a significant drop from earlier this year, when billionaire Peter Thiel donated $1.7 million. Colbert, on the other hand, raised $43,896 last month.

As Mitt Romney comes closer GOP 2012 nomination with major endorsements and primary wins, Ron Paul struggles to remind voters he's still running.

Paul recently told CBS's Face The Nation that "the votes haven't been counted ... there's no way I'm gonna give up on the effort to get the Republicans back to their roots."

(h/t ABC News)

Dan Merica, CNN
Darryl Williams and Benjamin Kline were shivering before the speech even started, their black umbrella no match for the steady rain and brisk Philadelphia wind. Even as water hit their faces, though, they were smiling, excited at the thought of seeing Ron Paul.Williams and Kline are true believers. They are two men who in spite of political reality and weather still come out to support their "ideal candidate." They don't care that many have crowned Mitt Romney the presumptive nominee or that it is now mathematically impossible for Paul to win the Republican nomination before...

David Zurawik, Baltimore Sun
Tuesday night, there was a two-hour report by "Frontline" that explained better than anything I have ever seen on TV how the middle-class got shredded by Wall Street and sold-out by our elected leaders in Washintgon -- and that includes Democrats in the White House.There were also presidential primaries that made Mitt Romney all but official as the GOP candidate.But all anyone will be talking about this morning is President Barack Obama slow jamming the news with latenight host Jimmy Fallon at the University of North Carolina.

Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
In the short term, the recovery looks shaky. In the long term, the economy looks shaky "” so shaky that it may be many years before a president of either party or any ideology can count on winning a second term.Polls show that President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney is narrowing, but should Obama lose in November the decisive factor won't be Romney (who is as inept a presidential candidate as this country has produced in decades). The real culprit will be the economy.

WASHINGTON — Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney added to his big lead in the race for convention delegates Tuesday with a five-state sweep of Republican presidential primaries.

Romney won at least 95 delegates when he won primaries in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

A total of 209 delegates were at stake, though the status of Pennsylvania's 59 delegates probably won't be known for several days because delegates were elected directly on the ballot and they were not identified by which candidate they support.

Romney had a total of 793 delegates – just 351 shy of the 1,144 delegates it will take to win the Republican nomination to run against President Barack Obama in November. With former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum out of the race, Romney could collect the needed delegates by the end of May.

The other two Republican candidates still in the race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, were far behind. Gingrich had 137 delegates and Paul had 79.

___

New York

Delegates at stake: 92

Romney: 42

Paul: 0

Gingrich: 0

Remaining: 50

___

Delaware

Delegates at stake: 17

Romney: 17

Paul: 0

Gingrich: 0

___

Connecticut

Delegates at stake: 25

Romney: 25

Paul: 0

Gingrich: 0

___

Rhode Island

Delegates at stake: 16

Romney: 11

Paul: 4

Gingrich: 0

Remaining: 1

___

Pennsylvania

Delegates at stake: 59

Remaining: 59

Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said Monday morning that his comments seemingly comparing recent GOP actions against him to communist China had been "taken out of context."

"I said, you know, if you're not on-script and you get knocked out of an event like that, the parties are supposed to be big-tent, you're supposed to bring in all ideas," Huntsman said on MSNBC. "And I said I thought for a moment about what they do in China if you're off-script. The [communist] party, they knock you out. We shouldn’t be doing that here, we should be accommodating all voices."

On Sunday, Huntsman spoke about being disinvited from a Republican Party fundraiser after calling for an "alternative voice" and the need for a third party movement.

"This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off-script," Huntsman said at an appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, according to BuzzFeed.

"I don’t know what world these people are living in," he continued, referring to unnamed Republicans' outspoken stances on American relations with China. "Is this the best we could do?"

Huntsman exited the GOP primary earlier this year after finishing third place in the New Hampshire primary. He's since been critical of the party and lukewarm on Mitt Romney, the Republican frontrunner. On Monday, however, he reiterated that he'd vote for the former Massachusetts governor, commending Romney's "commitment to jobs and his ability to articulate a plan for getting us back in action."

Last night I joined Rachel Maddow to talk about Mitt Romney's evolving views on Afghanistan.  At various times, Romney has said we needed to get out of the Afghanistan mess, agreeing for the most part at the time of early GOP debates with House Representative and then presidential candidate Michele Bachmann until shifting to a harder-line posture on staying in Afghanistan.

Romney, who has endorsed the general time frame of closing down most of the US mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014 has been critical of Obama's decision to drawdown the committed surge forces and bringing levels to 68,000.  Obama -- acting like a Commander-in-Chief should listened to the advice of 'the generals' and then made a decision based on larger strategic factors and ordered that the surge troops be drawn out.  Romney has implied that Obama should not only 'listen to the generals' but should do what they tell him. 

Romney might want to go back and read testimony given by former ISAF Commander General David Petraeus about Afghanistan before Congress in which Petraeus said that the recommendations he was making were based on factors inside and related to Afghanistan alone -- but were not taking into account the larger "strategic situation."  Petraeus shied away from giving a strategic assessment of the value of Afghanistan in relation to other matters like America's posture with Iran, with the broader Middle East, with stability dynamics in South Asia -- particularly with Pakistan and India. 

Obama and his national security team lead by Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough have committed to a strategic rebalancing of US forces and long-term commitments. They are working to downsize America's vulnerability to the instability and challenges in the Middle East and South Asia which are sapping American resources and power and deploy to where global economic growth is shifting:  Asia. 

If Mitt Romney re-reads his Citadel speech and checks out the Asia sections, he agrees that Asia needs more attention.

The clip of my discussion with Rachel Maddow follows below:

Rachel Maddow talks to Atlantic editor-at-large Steve Clemons about whether John McCain is pushing Mitt Romney into more hawkish, never leave Afghanistan position

While I have largely dismissed the foreign policy competence and coherence of Mitt Romney's strategic vision in the past, I'm seeing Romney up his game in a few hires he has made. 

First of all, the Romney team has brought on board former Department of State Under Secretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky to play a lead role on shaping his national security and foreign policy agenda and positions.  Dobriansky, who until recently was a senior executive with ThomsonReuters and once was Vice President and Director of the Washington operations for the Council on Foreign Relations, is a formidable and creative public intellectual.  I'm not sure she wrote the piece, but one could sense a different hand -- probably Paula Dobriansky's by my guess -- behind the interesting Mitt Romney Foreign Policy magazine oped, "Bowing to the Kremlin", in which he challenged Obama's caught-on-mic comments to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on ballistic missile defense.

The essay was tough-minded, internally consistent and coherent, and a real contrast to other Romney foreign policy commentary.

The next big hire that I mentioned to Rachel Maddow last evening was that Ric Grenell, a long time communications expert who served as spokesman for four US Ambassadors to the United Nations, is now Romney's national security spokesman.  Grenell worked for former Senator Jack Danforth at the UN; then John Negroponte; then the affable John Bolton; and finally Zalmay Khalilzad.  During the long battle over John Bolton's Senate confirmation vote which he never received, Grenell was a tireless, tenacious, tough advocate for Bolton with the media.  I was one of those skeptical of John Bolton's UN confirmation, but I give Grenell credit for being fair-minded and serious with me. 

Foreign policy pundits and analysts are now going to have to reconsider Romney on foreign policy and national security and consider his positions more seriously. 

Presidents aren't just people -- they are franchises.  And with Dobriansky and Grenell, Romney has upped the stock value of his foreign policy operation.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The judge overseeing John Edwards' criminal trial has canceled a hearing on whether to quash a subpoena issued to a former speech writer for the two-time presidential candidate.

The hearing was scheduled for Friday.

Edwards' lawyers are seeking an extensive list of documents from Wendy Button, a 2008 campaign staffer expected to testify.

U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles said Wednesday another judge would have to decide the issue because her husband is a former law partner of one of the lawyers representing Button, presenting a potential conflict.

In court documents filed Thursday, Eagles reversed course, canceling Friday's hearing and ordering the lawyers involved in the issue to file written briefs with the court.

Opening statements in Edwards' trial over campaign finance violations are scheduled for Monday.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) took a shot at Mitt Romney's Mormonism on Thursday, saying the Republican presidential candidate will have trouble appealing to the national electorate because his father was "born on a polygamy commune in Mexico."

The Daily Beast's Ben Jacobs reports:

While discussing swing states, Schweitzer said Romney would have a “tall order to position Hispanics to vote for him,” and I replied that was mildly ironic since Mitt’s father was born in Mexico, giving the clan a nominal claim to being Hispanic. Schweitzer replied that it is “kinda ironic given that his family came from a polygamy commune in Mexico, but then he’d have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico, given the gender discrepancy.” Women, he said, are “not great fans of polygamy, 86 percent were not great fans of polygamy. I am not alleging by any stretch that Romney is a polygamist and approves of [the] polygamy lifestyle, but his father was born into [a] polygamy commune in Mexico.”

Romney's father, the late Michigan governor George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1907 to American citizens living in a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints colony. The Romney family had left the U.S. to avoid being prosecuted for polygamy after laws against the practice were enforced, and returned to the U.S. after the Mexican Revolution broke out. Some family members stayed in Mexico and Mitt Romney has about 40 relatives still living south of the border.

Romney's religion has surfaced repeatedly during the campaign. Robert Jeffress, a Baptist pastor who supported Rick Perry's failed presidential bid, called Mormonism a "cult" and questioned whether Romney was truly a Christian. Jeffress was joined by other evangelicals, who said they believed that Romney's faith would pose a bigger problem for the former Massachusetts governor during the general campaign.

President Barack Obama, however, has declared faith to be an off-limits topic in the campaign.