Lessons learned for both the Obama White House and congressional Republicans?... Sex, lies, and email: Expect a lot of grandstanding over the Petraeus affair… Why were the GOP polls so wrong?... Is the independent vote overrated?... Breaking down the Catholic vote… And redistricting made House races less competitive.

Pool / Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks after a wreath-laying ceremony on Veteran's Day at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 11, 2012 in Arlington, Va.

*** Lessons learned? Wasn’t the biggest post-election story in Washington supposed to be the fiscal cliff? Ah, nothing like a sex scandal to distract from what SHOULD be the biggest story in Washington, so we lead with that… Perhaps the biggest mistake the Obama White House made during the debt-ceiling debacle of 2011 was think that all it had to do was strike a deal with House Speaker John Boehner. The New York Times reports that the White House says it has learned its lesson -- President Obama “will not simply hunker down” in closed-door meetings with Republican leaders. He “will travel beyond the Beltway at times to rally public support for a deficit-cutting accord that mixes tax increases on the wealthy with spending cuts. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will meet with corporate executives at the White House as he uses the nation’s fiscal problems to start rebuilding relations with business leaders… He hopes to enlist them to persuade Republicans in Congress to accept higher taxes on the assurance that he can deliver Democrats’ votes for future reductions in fast-growing entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.” If one lesson from July 2011’s failure is the lack of an OUTSIDE game (i.e. building support among business for instance), what about any lessons they learned in dealing with the congressional GOP leadership? We wonder if Team Obama learned that it might have better success in engaging rank-and-file Republicans (think Sens. Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker or Tom Coburn) than just GOP leaders. Keep an eye on this. Will the White House, through other Democratic senators, begin to build a Plan B should the Boehner talks stall?

*** Signals that Republicans might work together with Democrats? And perhaps the biggest mistake that Republicans made was to believe that opposing Obama at almost every turn would break his presidency. Well, it didn’t turn out that way, and some are seeing the writing on the wall. For instance, we see folks like conservative writer Bill Kristol argue that Republicans need to consider raising some taxes on the wealthy. “You know what? It won’t kill the country if Republicans raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won’t, I don’t think,” he said on FOX yesterday. “I don’t really understand why Republicans don’t take Obama’s offer to freeze taxes for everyone below $250,000. Make it $500,000, make it a million.” And Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) said on “Meet the Press” yesterday that he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) are revisiting their comprehensive immigration reform. As for House Speaker John Boehner, his job right now is to prove to the White House that he can deliver on a deal. It’s why his office and other House Republicans are talking to any media that will listen to send the message that Boehner has more leeway to cut a deal. Of course, sending that message now is an acknowledgement that perhaps Boehner did NOT have the same leeway in July 2011.

*** Sex, lies, and email: Expect a lot of grandstanding over the next several days after the news that CIA Director David Petraeus resigned his job due to an extramarital affair. Sex? Check. FBI investigation? Check. Upcoming congressional hearings? Check. But ask yourself this: If no national security was being compromised, is this truly a scandal? And maybe that’s what has some in Washington scratching their heads. And one thing that could lessen the usual partisan grandstanding on a matter like this is that Petraeus was an Obama administration official whom conservatives and Republicans absolutely adored. By the way, if Obama and Boehner were clever, they’d use all the attention the Petraeus affair is receiving to do some serious fiscal-cliff negotiating. Petraeus is the perfect shiny-metal object distraction.

*** Why were the GOP polls wrong? Turning back to last week’s presidential election, Politico has a story asking this question: How could the Republican polls have been SO wrong? “Top party strategists and officials always knew there was a chance that President Barack Obama would get reelected, or that Republicans wouldn’t gain control of the Senate. But down to the final days of the national campaign, few anticipated the severe setbacks that Republicans experienced on Nov. 6. The reason: Across the party’s campaigns, committees and super PACs, internal polling gave an overly optimistic read on the electorate. The Romney campaign entered the last week of the election convinced that Colorado, Florida and Virginia were all but won, that the race in Ohio was neck and neck and that the Republican nominee had a legitimate shot in Pennsylvania.” So what went wrong? Politico surmises that GOP likely-voter models just didn’t think the electorate would have as many minorities and young people. In other words, they didn’t think 2008 would happen again. Well, it did. What’s really odd is that we thought it was the regular practice of partisan pollsters to provide results with the OTHER side’s best case turnout projection reflected. Did they not do that? Did they simply believe enthusiasm among partisans told a better story? It’s true that partisan enthusiasm can make a big difference in a midterm election; in presidential elections, it’s less certain. One need only look at 2000 (and the missed Democratic surge, despite GOP enthusiasm for Bush) or 2004 (and the missed GOP surge, despite Dem partisan enthusiasm for Kerry). 

*** Is the independent vote overrated? In our latest installment looking at the exit polls from last week's presidential election, here's something you might not have known: Romney actually won the independent vote, 50%-45%. So now twice in the last three elections -- in 2004 and 2012 -- the winner has lost the indie vote. What does this mean? Well, party ID appears to matter much more: In 2004, it was even; in 2008, it was D+7; and last week, it was D+6. Also, many polls have different ways of deciding who is an “independent”; some pollsters include “lean Dems and lean GOPers” in their independent number which lately has given the indie number a GOP skew. If you move the leaners into their own parties, then you get a more pure indie subgroup (and you also realize how really small of a subgroup it is).

*** Breaking down the Catholic vote: Indeed, a better predictor of presidential elections seems to be Catholic voters. Bush won them in 2004 (52%-47%); Obama won them in 2008 (54%-45%); and Obama won them in 2012 (50%-48%). Yet Obama performed worse among white Catholics in 2012 (losing them 59%-40%) than he did in ’08 (52%-47%). What went on here? Well, Obama fared much better with Latino Catholics, and that boosted his numbers among overall Catholics. Over time, could the Catholic vote become less of a telling predictor if Latinos continue to vote in droves for Democrats? Or does it become the first place we find out whether Republicans have made any inroads with Latinos is via the prism of the Catholic vote?

*** Redistricting made races less competitive: Some have wondered why President Obama would appear to have coattails for Senate races this time around, but not much of them in the House. Democrats expect that when all the votes are in they will pick up a net of seven seats. But that's hardly coming close to taking back they House (they needed 25) or making up for the 63 seats they lost in 2010. The most obvious explanation for this is redistricting. In fact, just 88 races had the winner with 55% or less, down from 113 in 2010 (a 22% decrease). But there were even fewer truly competitive races. Just 38 (!!!) races had a winner that got 52% or less, down from 61 in 2010 (37% reduction). The biggest decrease took place in Pennsylvania, where Republicans took over the state legislature and governorship in 2010. The Keystone State had seven 55-and-under races in 2010 but just three in 2012. And just one of those was 52-and-under -- and it was a Republican takeover.

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SANFORD, FL -- Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said farewell to Florida voters on Monday morning, making his final stop here at the top of a four-stop, four-state tour of battleground states on the second-to-last day of the election.

Romney, whose path to the White House would be significantly endangered by a loss in Florida, said that a better tomorrow begins with a Romney victory on Tuesday.

"Tomorrow, we begin a better tomorrow. This nation is going to change for the better tomorrow. Your work is making a difference, the people of the world are watching, the people of America are watching," Romney said at an airplane hangar rally in an Orlando suburb this morning. "We can begin a better tomorrow tomorrow, and with the help of the people in Florida, that's exactly what's going to happen."

Romney, joined by Republican statehouse leaders past and present, including sitting Florida Gov. Rick Scott, and the popular former Gov. Jeb Bush, urged Floridians to get to the polls on Tuesday, asking for "every single vote."

"Look, we have one job left and that's to make sure that on election day we get, make certain that everybody who's qualified to vote gets out to vote," Romney said. "We need every single vote in Florida."

Advisers to the campaign say that of the three biggest swing states -- Florida, Virginia and Ohio -- they're most confident about a victory in Florida on Tuesday, and the candidate's schedule reflects that confidence.

This morning's rally marked Romney's final appearance in the sunshine state. He has two more rallies planned today in Virginia, and the Associated Press has reported the campaign is considering adding one last Ohio rally on Tuesday, after what was expected to be Romney's final appearance in that state at an airport hangar rally this afternoon

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is trying to inflate the sense of momentum surrounding his campaign, President Barack Obama's re-election team argued Friday. 

A senior Obama campaign official told NBC News that their tracking of the handful of battleground states that could decide the election suggests that Romney isn't performing as well as his campaign would have voters believe. 

"His momentum narrative does have an impact on how people view the race on the ground in the states," said the official. "And we wanted to correct it."

A series of public national and battleground state polls have shown Romney improving -- or even, in some cases, pulling even -- versus Obama in the aftermath of his successful first debate performance. The NBC News-Wall Street Journal released this past Sunday showed the two candidates tied at 47 percent apiece among likely voters. 

In recent campaign stops, the GOP nominee has made an unabashed effort to make the case that momentum is on his side. 

"These debates really have propelled our campaign across the country, and in some respects, I think they diminished the Obama campaign," Romney said Thursday in Ohio. "He knows that I’m out there and they’re not making much progress, and so his campaign gets smaller and smaller, focused on smaller and smaller things. Our campaign is about big things."

The Obama campaign argued that their early and absentee voting operation, combined with their analysis of the situation in each battleground, suggests that Romney is bluffing. 

"I think over the last couple of weeks, there's been this sense that Romney has this incredible momentum, and it's not borne out by any fact," the Obama official asserted.

Romney's also tried in recent days to cast himself as the candidate of "big change" while painting Obama as representative of the "status quo." 

The Obama campaign suggested that the president is preparing to engage Romney on that assertion in the closing days of the 2012 campaign. 

"He doesn't have the change message; it's just not believable," the Obama official said. "It's not believable by voters, and actually gives us an opening. Yeah, he does want to change. He wants to go back to the very same policies that crashed the economy."

The official added: "So you'll be hearing that from us pretty heavily over the course of the next week."

President Barack Obama suggested he'll be able to achieve a major fiscal reform deal as well as comprehensive immigration reform in his second term, according to his off-the-record conversation with the Des Moines Register.

The White House reversed course on insisting that the president's conversation on Tuesday with the editor and the publisher of the Iowa paper remain off-the-record and allowed the paper to publish a transcript of the conversation.

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama chats with well-wishers October 24, 2012 upon arrival at Quad Cities International Airport in Moline, Illinois.

In the conversation, the president asserted he would be able to get to some unfinished business from his first term if he's elected to a second, while simultaneously arguing that Republican nominee Mitt Romney would have a difficult time meeting all of his commitments.

"It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time," Obama told the Iowa paper of the upcoming "fiscal cliff," which Obama said he expected to dominate the first six months of next year.

The fiscal cliff refers to the combination of automatic spending cuts -- particularly to the defense budget -- and tax hikes set to take place on Jan. 1, barring action by Congress. The fiscal cliff is largely the byproduct of legislative stalemate over the past two years, and economists generally agree their combined effect would be disastrous for the U.S. economy.

Obama suggested his grand bargain would offer "$2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending," which he said "credibly" fits within the parameters of the bipartisan, Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission Obama had organized but whose recommendations the president declined to endorse.

The president also suggested immigration reform might come more easily during the next four years, precisely because of the rhetoric Romney and other Republicans had used on the issue.

Obama said:

The second thing I’m confident we’ll get done next year is immigration reform. And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. George Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to understand the changing nature of America. And so I am fairly confident that they’re going to have a deep interest in getting that done. And I want to get it done because it’s the right thing to do and I've cared about this ever since I ran back in 2008.

Romney had run to the right of his challengers on the issue of immigration during this year's Republican primary, which contributed to the 45-point deficit versus Obama among Latino voters from which Romney now suffers. The GOP nominee has sought to stoke Latino disappointment in Obama's failure to achieve comprehensive immigration reform, and Romney has vowed to seek immigration reform during his first year, if elected. But Romney hasn't specified the contours of his immigration proposals.

Obama also argued to the Des Moines Register that Romney would have a tough time even reaching those proposals, since he'd be forced to reckon with politically bloody battles over repealing Obama's health reform or Wall Street reform laws, and would almost certainly have to propose a variation of the fiscally conservative budgets authored by his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

Obama said:

And the problem you’ve seen in this campaign is he’s made commitments -- his first day he’s got to introduce a bill to repeal Obamacare. And that's a commitment he cannot back off of. That is a huge, messy fight. His first day in office, he has to make some commitments in rolling back things like the Consumer Finance Protection Board we put in place on Wall Street reform. His budget -- the Ryan budget -- there’s no way that, if he’s president, he can avoid having a showdown on a budget that his running mate introduced, or a variation of it, because he’s committed to cutting spending by 20 percent across the board on discretionary and increasing defense spending by $2 trillion.

The Des Moines Register, one of the most influential papers in Iowa, a battleground state worth six electoral votes on Nov. 6, will publish its endorsement on Saturday evening.

Has the race fundamentally changed? We’ll get a better answer in the next few days… Romney to deliver foreign-policy speech in Virginia at 11:20 am ET… But where are the real foreign-policy differences between Romney and Obama?... The Obama camp -- with new TV ad and memo -- issues its rebuttal to Romney… Obama refers to his debate performance… His camp and DNC raked in $181 million in September… Romney moves to the middle – rhetorically… And Priorities USA’s latest TV ad.

*** Has the race changed? We all assume that the presidential contest has changed following last week’s debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney. The most recent sign: Gallup’s daily tracking, which had Obama up 50%-45% among registered voters in the three days before the debate, but shows the race tied 47%-47% in the three days after. But to see if the race has truly changed, we’re awaiting battleground-state polls conducted over the weekend through today -- to fully let the debate, job numbers, and everything else sink in. The body language from both campaigns suggests that the race did change; you’re seeing 1) a more confident Romney camp and 2) an Obama campaign with a greater sense of urgency. And if the upcoming polls show this, it will give Team Romney another shot in the arm, just like Obama got after the conventions. But it’s also very possible that the race hasn’t fundamentally changed, but simply tightened and is back to where everyone thought it would be six months ago. Where are the battleground states, polling wise by the end of this week? Is Ohio a margin-of-error contest, or is the president still ahead by 4-6 points? What about Wisconsin? Iowa? These are the three states where Romney had fallen far behind and needed to make up the most ground.

*** Talking foreign policy: After his strong debate performance last week and two weeks before the final presidential debate on foreign policy, Mitt Romney today will deliver a foreign-policy speech in Virginia attacking the Obama administration’s response to the unrest in the Middle East. “I know the president hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope,” he will say at the Virginia Military Institute beginning at 11:20 am ET, per excerpts. “But hope is not a strategy. We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds, when our defense spending is being arbitrarily and deeply cut, when we have no trade agenda to speak of, and the perception of our strategy is not one of partnership, but of passivity.” Romney also will use his address to criticize the administration's response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, which killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. “This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam… No, as the Administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others.”

*** Yet where are the real policy differences? But according to the excerpts of the speech, almost every policy Romney will call for -- tough sanctions on Iran, withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2014, a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians, free trade, vigorously going after the terrorists in Libya -- has been pursued by the Obama administration. (The one exception we can see is Romney’s call to arm the Syrian rebels, but the CIA already appears to be doing this covertly.) Indeed, the New York Times today notes that Romney “has yet to fill in many of the details of how he would conduct policy toward the rest of the world, or to resolve deep ideological rifts within the Republican Party and his own foreign policy team. It is a disparate and politely fractious team of advisers that includes warring tribes of neoconservatives, traditional strong-defense conservatives and a band of self-described ‘realists’ who believe there are limits to the degree the United States can impose its will.” The difference Romney appears to be attempting to outline is one of tone and style -- not substance.

Lynne Sladky / AP

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, waves as he arrives with his wife Ann at a campaign rally, Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012, in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

*** The Obama camp’s rebuttal to Romney: Meanwhile, the Obama camp is countering Romney’s foreign-policy speech with a TV ad it’s airing only in Virginia (so it can get into today’s coverage of the speech), which notes the criticism that Romney’s foreign trip and his initial statement to the embassy attacks received. The ad’s kicker: “If this is how he handles the world now, just think what Mitt Romney might do as president.” The campaign also issues a memo stating: “The fact is that Barack Obama has one of the strongest national security records of any President in generations – he has decimated al Qaeda’s leadership, taken out Osama bin Laden, ended the war in Iraq, provided unparalleled support to Israel, produced unprecedented pressure on Iran, strengthened our alliances, and restored our standing in the world.” It continues, “In contrast, Mitt Romney has, throughout this campaign, raised more questions than answers about what he’d actually do as president. He supported the Iraq war and said that removing all of our troops from Iraq was ‘tragic,’ he called Russia - not al-Qaeda - our ‘number one geopolitical foe,’ and he said that he wouldn’t have set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan.” That said, the foreign-policy advantage the White House THOUGHT it had a month ago is now in question. Every day, a new question arises on how the security situation was handled in Benghazi.

*** Obama refers to his debate performance: At a Los Angeles fundraiser last night, per NBC’s Ali Weinberg, President Obama alluded to his debate performance -- his first public comments regarding his less-than-stellar showing. Praising his opening acts at the Nokia Theater, which included Stevie Wonder, Jon Bon Jovi and Katy Perry, Obama said, “These guys perform flawlessly night after night.” He then added, waiting a beat for comedic timing, “I can’t always say the same.” He then said this about his 2008 campaign, “Everybody always remembers the victory, but they don’t always remember the bumps in the road; things always look good in retrospect. But in the middle of it, we were -- we made all kinds of mistakes. We goofed up, I goofed up, but the American people carried us forward.”

*** Team Obama hauled in $181 million last month: For Team Obama, Friday’s job numbers helped soften the blow from the first debate. And so did its fundraising haul for September. On Saturday, the Obama campaign announced that it and the DNC had raised a whopping $181 million last month -- the largest monthly haul of the cycle by either side. We haven’t seen fundraising numbers for Team Romney, but the Obama/DNC haul suggests that its grassroots army is beginning to flex its muscles.

*** Moving to the middle -- rhetorically: Over the weekend, Politico reported that the Romney camp is running a radio ad in Ohio pitching Romney as a bipartisan fixer who will work across the aisle. And this epitomizes the shift we’ve seen from Romney in the last week since the debate. His policies haven’t necessarily moved to the middle, but his rhetoric has. This began at the debate. Tone is everything when trying to straddle ideology and electability. And Romney, for the first time this campaign, appears to have found his voice on this front. And speaking of finding his voice, another notable move over the weekend: Romney is now sharing personal stories.

*** Priorities’ latest TV ad: The pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA Action is up with a TV ad hitting Romney on education. “Take away his toys and he’ll play with a stick. Take away their bikes and they’ll still find a way to get where they’re going,” the ad goes. “But if you take away early childhood education, slash K-12 funding, and cut college aid for middle class families they won’t go far. Yet that’s exactly what Mitt Romney wants to do to pay for a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar tax break for multi-millionaires. If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses.”

*** On the trail: Obama is out in California, where he announces the establishment of the César E. Chávez national monument and where he hits fundraisers in San Francisco… Romney gives his aforementioned foreign-policy speech and then holds a rally in Newport News, VA at 5:20 pm ET… Jill Biden campaigns in Pennsylvania… Paul Ryan stumps in Ohio and Michigan… Later this week, both Obama and Romney campaign in Ohio on Tuesday, and the VP debate is on Thursday.

Countdown to VP debate: 3 days
Countdown to 2^nd presidential debate: 8 days
Countdown to 3^rd presidential debate: 14 days
Countdown to Election Day: 29 days

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Battling over the Bush tax cuts (again)… For Obama, this is both an opportunity (creates contrast with Romney) and a challenge (we’ve already been down this road before)… But have the Bush tax cuts actually worked?... Democrats blast Romney’s offshore accounts… House GOPers put pressure on House Dems… Boehner: The American people probably won’t fall in love in Romney… And has health care already disappeared from the campaign trail?

*** Battling over the Bush tax cuts (again): The last time we left you on this topic was back in late 2010, when President Obama agreed to temporarily extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all income groups -- including the wealthy -- which he had campaigned against in ’08. That move disappointed his base, but it also won him GOP concessions (on payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance), and it paved the way to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and approve the New START treaty. But the president vowed not to extend the tax cuts for the wealthy at the end of 2012, when he would have more leverage (because it would be after his re-election bid). “When they expire in two years, I will fight to end them,” he said at a Dec. 7, 2010 press conference. And today, Obama makes his first chess move in this new tax-cut battle: At a White House at 11:50 am ET, the president will call for a one-year extension of the tax cuts for ONLY those making less than $250,000. House Republicans, the New York Times notes, plan a vote later this month to extend the tax cuts for ALL income groups.

*** Obama’s opportunity and challenge: For Obama, today’s move allows him to change the subject after Friday’s weak jobs report. Perhaps more importantly, it enables him to draw a contrast with the Republicans and Mitt Romney, who just yesterday was raising money from wealthy folks in the Hamptons and who had spent his July 4 vacation at his New Hampshire lake house. But this is also dangerous ground for the president. We’ve been down this road before, and Obama has already caved once. The reason: Unlike Republicans, Democrats aren’t unified on this issue. Some of them want the threshold to be $1 million; others are open to extending them TEMPORARILY for the wealthy. This time around, Obama has much more leverage -- with the expiration coming after the election -- but he still faces the situation where not all Democrats are unified. Here’s what we’re watching for today: Does he draw a line in the sand that he would VETO any legislation that extends all of the tax cuts? He’s said before he opposes extending them for those making more than $250,000. He said in 2008 and in 2010 and yet he extended ALL of them in 2010. But what does he say this time?

*** Have the Bush tax cuts worked? Here’s an entirely different question: Have these tax cuts worked? Have they promoted economic growth? Have they created lots of jobs? The Bush-era tax cuts have been in existence for 11 years now. During that time period, George W. Bush presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades; the Great Recession took place; and job creation during Obama’s presidency has been lackluster. In this renewed debate over the Bush tax cuts, we’re going to hear Republicans claim that not extending them -- especially for the wealthy -- will hurt the economy. And we’ll hear the same from Obama when it comes to extending them for the middle class. But what evidence is there that these tax cuts have truly benefited the U.S. economy? This is one of these accepted pieces of conventional wisdom that doesn’t get much study on the policy front because, politically, it’s so lethal.

*** Democrats blast Romney’s offshore accounts: Just 48 hours after Friday’s bad jobs report, Democrats were engaged in a full-out assault on Romney’s offshore accounts. (Coincidence?) Here was DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on FOX (at the end of her interview): “I'd really like to see Mitt Romney release more than one year of tax records, because there's been disturbing reports recently that he's got a Bermuda corporation, a secretive Bermuda corporation that no one knows anything about.” Sen. Dick Durbin on CBS: “[Romney] is the first and only candidate for president of the United States with a Swiss bank account with tax shelters, with tax avoidance schemes that involve so many foreign countries.” Gov. Martin O’Malley to ABC: “Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters.” And Robert Gibbs -- who has been one of the Democrats’ best TV surrogates -- to CNN: “I pick a bank because there is an ATM near my home, but Mitt Romney had a bank account in Switzerland.”

*** How does Team Romney respond? This was clearly a coordinated assault -- and a reminder that when the economic news is not good, the Obama campaign has little choice but to go down this road. For now, the Romney response is simply, “They are trying to distract from the bad economy,” which has the added benefit of likely being true… But the other fact is these relentless attacks by Team Obama on Romney’s business career have started to take a toll. Will the attacks on his personal wealth also take a toll before the Romney campaign figures out a better way to respond?

*** House GOPers to put pressure on Dems: While Obama and Democrats are making their move on the Bush-era tax cuts, House Republicans are planning votes over the next four weeks to give Democrats heartburn. Politico: “House Republicans will kick off the effort this week with another quixotic attempt to repeal Obama’s health care law. Next week, they will turn to defense, passing the Defense Department’s funding bill while trying to put the Obama administration on record as having no plan to avoid deep cuts to the Pentagon next year. After that, Republicans intend to take up a slew of regulatory relief bills. And before the House breaks in August for its monthlong recess, GOP leaders plan to hold a vote on tax rates and principles for future tax reform.” Make no mistake, these votes are about writing TV ads and direct mail pieces. Meanwhile, the DCCC is up with a new online advertising campaign hitting GOP efforts to repeal the health-care law.

*** Boehner: “The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love in with Mitt Romney”: Speaking of House Republicans, don’t miss this quote from Speaker John Boehner (at a June 30 fundraiser in West Virginia): “The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney.” He went on to say, per Roll Call: “I’ll tell you this: 95% of the people that show up to vote in November are going to show up in that voting booth, and they are going to vote for or against Barack Obama. Mitt Romney has some friends, relatives and fellow Mormons ... some people that are going to vote for him. But that’s not what this election is about. This election is going to be a referendum on the president’s failed economic policies.” We’ll say this: John Boehner hasn’t fallen in love with Romney, either…

*** Health care has already disappeared from the radar screen: A final observation: Have you noticed how no one is no longer talking about health care? It’s either Friday’s job numbers. Or Mitt Romney’s wealth. Or the new battle over the Bush tax cuts. Yes, House Republicans will schedule their vote -- again -- to repeal the health-care law, and the DCCC has that online advertising campaign mentioned above. But outside of these things, is the issue slowly disappearing from the presidential campaign trail beyond being an applause line? It sure looks like it this morning.

Countdown to GOP convention: 49 days
Countdown to Dem convention: 56 days
Countdown to Election Day: 120 days

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Four month to go until Election Day… GOP’s tax argument on health care cuts both ways… Roberts switched his vote?... Why this matters to conservatives: They realize they were thisclose to overturning the whole law… Obama makes plea to his donors… And RGA/DGA announce 2ndQ fundraising numbers.

*** Four months to go: Heading into this July 4 holiday week -- and with both President Obama and Mitt Romney without events today and tomorrow -- it’s not a bad time to look down the road to see what remains ahead of us in the presidential contest. At the end of this week, we’ll reach the four-months-out point of the race. In addition, now that we’ve cleared the Supreme Court/health care mile marker we have three more markers to pass: Romney’s VP pick (coming either this month or next), the conventions (in late August and early September), and the presidential debates (in September and October). And those are just the things we know are coming down the road; the unexpected also awaits us.

Nam Y. Huh / AP

Health care overhaul supporters hold signs during a rally at Daley Plaza in Chicago.

*** A taxing issue: As for Thursday’s Supreme Court decision, so far it appears to have created a political status quo. But the right has done their best to make lemonade out of the health-care lemons by taking advantage of the court’s rationale that the mandate is a tax. Make no mistake: House and Senate Republicans want to run against something, and this gives them their opening. (Then again, don’t forget that Republicans -- in 2010 -- ALREADY used this strategy, arguing that the health-care law raised taxes.) But this strategy puts Romney in a box. After all, he signed into law legislation creating a mandate, too. So was that also a tax? Indeed, the Obama campaign highlighted this exchange yesterday between FOX’s Chris Wallace and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Wallace: “If the Obama mandate is a tax on the middle class, isn't the Romney mandate a tax on the middle class?” McConnell: “I think Gov. Romney will have to speak for himself on what was done in Massachusetts.” Ouch. By the way, how many Democratic candidates for House and Senate will use Romney to push back against these attacks? We’re betting many of Romney’s health-care sound bites will become more well-known on the congressional level.

*** Roberts switched his vote? Over the weekend, CBS reported what many had been speculating ever since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the federal health-care law: that Chief Justice John Roberts had switched his vote. “… Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.” More from CBS: “Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.”

*** Why this matters to conservatives: This reporting has raised the obvious question: Who leaked these deliberations? Supreme Court clerks? The justices themselves? Whoever it was, this explanation is now going to be the only one conservatives will believe and accept, even if somehow other leaks from the court end up contradicting this storyline. Until they go to their grave, most conservatives will believe Roberts somehow flipped and did so under pressure. Here’s another question: Does it even matter? But to conservatives, it matters A LOT. Why? They now realize they were thisclose to overturning the whole law. Trust us, many still can’t believe they had Kennedy for a full overturn.

*** Spare some change? Also over the weekend, the Daily Beast got its hands on a recording of a fundraising call Obama made to his donors while he was returning from Colorado aboard Air Force One. His message: Given all the GOP-leaning outside money, he needs help from his contributors. “‘The majority on this call maxed out to my campaign last time. I really need you to do the same this time,’ the president said in a highly unusual (and presumably legal) fundraising pitch from Air Force One on his way back to Washington from Colorado Springs, where he’d been assessing the terrible damage caused by uncontained wildfires. A special phone on the government aircraft is dedicated to political calls that are paid for by the campaign. More: “‘I’m asking you to meet or exceed what you did in 2008,” the presidential pitchman continued… ‘Because we’re going to have to deal with these super PACs in a serious way. And if we don’t, frankly I think the political [scene] is going to be changed permanently. Because the special interests that are financing my opponent’s campaign are just going to consolidate themselves. They’re gonna run Congress and the White House.’”

*** Must be the money! Speaking of fundraising… The Republican Governors Association says it raised $16.7 million in the second quarter, which it notes is twice the amount it brought in during the second quarter of 2008. And so far this year, the RGA has raked in $29 million -- slightly more than it raised at this point in 2010, when there were 37 gubernatorial races around the country. (Think the Walker recall helped here?) For its part, the Democratic Governors Association says that it raised $13 million across all of its entities (including its Super PAC and 501c4) this quarter, and that it has raised a total of $21 million for the first half of this year. The RGA number doesn’t include the money it raised through other entities.

*** A final note: Our morning column will be off tomorrow and Wednesday, but we’ll return on Thursday. As always, of course, we’ll update the blog as news warrants. Happy Fourth of July!

Countdown to GOP convention: 56 days
Countdown to Dem convention: 63 days
Countdown to Election Day: 127 days

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