ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL -- Mitt Romney's campaign opened a new front in its battle to define President Obama as far to the left of even Democrats like Bill Clinton, with the presumptive GOP nominee accusing the president of trying to "reverse" welfare reform.

The GOP contender, whose campaign resurfaced this issue of welfare reform this morning with a new television ad and a conference call, cast the Clinton era welfare reform effort, which tied welfare payments to work, a "great accomplishment," and praised the value of a job as strengthening the American economy and American people.

In the next breath, he called out President Obama for what he claimed was an attempt to gut the work requirement.

"I hope you understand that President Obama in just the last few days has tried to reverse that accomplishment by taking the work requirement out of welfare," Romney told a crowd gathered on a factory floor here. "That is wrong. If I’m president, I’ll put work back in welfare.”

The Romney campaign is charging that a waiver issued by the Department of Health and Human Services would exempt states from the work requirements contained in the law; the memo at issue stipulates that a waiver only be granted if the state offers a substitute that achieves the same work goals.

Romney also defended his own work on welfare reform as Governor of Massachusetts, already a target for Democrats.

"We must include more work in welfare. When I was governor of my state, I fought time and again. My legislature passed a bill removing the work requirements at the level we’d had in the past. I vetoed that and then fought time and again to get more work requirements, to raise the work requirements in my state, not because I don’t think people who need help should be helped," Romney said. "I very much agree that those who are seriously disabled or are unable to work need to have help of the rest of us, but those who can work ought to have the opportunity for a good job, and if they’re getting state assistance, they ought to have the requirement for a good job. We will end a culture dependency and restore a culture of good, hard work.”

In his first public appearance since Sunday's shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, Romney also set politics aside at the top of his remarks to call for a moment of silence for the victims.

"I'd like to have a moment of silence to honor the people who lost their lives in Wisconsin in that tragic, tragic shooting at the Sikh temple. The tragedy is even more profound because the Sikh religion and the Sikh people are such peaceful, loving individuals," Romney said. "And I think its also more tragic because the shooter was apparently someone who was motivated by hate. Hate based on race. Hate based on religion. For all those reasons, this is something that touches us very deeply."

A freshman congressman unseated a 10-term veteran colleague in a bitter Republican primary in a redrawn Illinois district. 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R) unseated longtime Rep. Don Manzullo in Illinois's redrawn 16th congressional district. The Associated Press called the race for Kinzinger on Tuesday evening. 

AP, file

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, right, unseated longtime Rep. Don Manzullo, left, in a bitter Republican primary.

The Kinzinger-Manzullo battle was just one of several districts forming the undercard of the day's presidential primary battle between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. (Romney won that race handily.)

But none of those contests were as bitter or high-profile, though, as the battle between the veteran Manzullo and Kinzinger, a 34-year-old Air Force veteran and deputy whip in the House who is seen as a potential rising star in the GOP.

The two Republicans had been drawn into a shared district by Democrats in the state legislature. The new 16th district had been seen as marginally favorable to Manzullo. 

The race had become a generational battle, and took on higher significance after a somewhat unusual endorsement by Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House, whose super PAC spent $50,000 on advertising against Manzullo.

Cantor’s decision to endorse added a new dimension of bitterness to the primary, prompting Manzullo to ask for the Virginia congressman’s resignation as majority leader.

Democratic leaders were more willing to get involved in another intramural scrape between Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., and former Rep. Debbie Halvorson, who was swept out of office by the Republican wave in 2010 after only a single term in office.

Jackson won the contest easily, and the AP called the race for him Tuesday evening.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,  traveled to Chicago earlier this month to endorse Jackson, who was facing the toughest primary battle of his career from Halvorson. Jackson has served in Congress since 1995 and is the son of the civil rights icon who shares the same name. 

But Jackson has also been forced to address allegations that he or an associate was engaged in an effort to raise campaign contributions for then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, in exchange for an appointment to Obama’s old Senate seat in 2008. Blagojevich was eventually convicted and sent to jail on corruption charges; the House Ethics Committee continues to investigate Jackson. 

Another Democratic favorite with ties to the Obama administration won a primary battle in her bid to challenge firebrand freshman GOP Rep. Joe Walsh in November. 

Tammy Duckworth, a disabled Iraq war veteran who served in the Obama administration as an official in the Department of Veterans Affairs, prevailed over opponent Raja Krishnamoorthi, according to the Associated Press. 

Duckworth, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2006, enjoyed the support of top Democrats including David Axelrod, the Chicago-based senior strategist to President Obama. She'll face Walsh this fall in a new 8th district redrawn in Democrats' favor.

Liberals also suffered a disappointing loss, too, in a Democratic primary in Illinois’s 10th congressional district. Liberal advocacy groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee have raised money to promote candidate Ilya Sheyman over businessman Brad Schneider, a more moderate candidate favored by the establishment. 

Schneider was able to hold off Sheyman, though, in the battle to take on freshman Republican Rep. Bob Dold in a competitive suburban Chicago district.

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday morning where he responded to Mitt Romney's assertions that Santorum is a "lightweight" when it comes to economic issues.  "If I am a lightweight, I agree he is a heavyweight, he is a big government heavyweight, that's what his record was."

Santorum listed the Massachusetts health care law, tax increases under Romney as governor of that state and his overall jobs record, saying, "if that's the kind of heavyweight that Mitt Romney thinks that we need, then we should probably just stick with Barack Obama."

Asked whether his campaign had gotten "off-message" with a debate over birth control, Santorum pushed back.  "The issue is not contraception, the issue is government-mandated health insurance and that to me is completely on message."  Santorum said he will continue to talk about the administration's initial decision to require religious organizations to provide birth control to employees as part of their health care plans. 

Pressed on comments he made last fall about his feelings that contraception is "wrong," Santorum replied:  "I was talking about my own personal faith and what I was saying is that the issue of out-of-wedlock births and what's going on with the destruction of the American family is something that I will talk about and have talked about in this campaign.  I wasn't talking about access to contraception, that wasn't the issue."  

Republicans have battled to make the contraception debate about religious liberty in the context of federal regulations that would force employers affiliated with religious institutions to offer coverage for contraception in their insurance policies -- even if that religion has moral objections to the use of contraception.

In that context, Santorum said, contraception "should" be part of the political debate.

"The only reason I would talk about this issue is, as I said, with respect to government mandates on people of faith," Santorum said. "That's why this issue continues to be talked about, and should be talked about -- in the context of the government forcing people of faith to do things against their religious beliefs."

Santorum fell further behind rival Mitt Romney in the race to the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination after Romney won all 20 of Puerto Rico's delegates in the territory's Sunday primary. Santorum's strategy for securing the nomination may hinge on blocking Romney from attaining the necessary delegates, and sparking a contested convention in August.

"What I've said is that I think it's going to be very difficult as this goes on for anybody to get to that magic number," Santorum said in a separate interview on CBS, adding that he thinks the odds of a contested convention are "increasing."

Tannen Maury / EPA

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks to customers while campaigning at Charley Parker's Diner in Springfield, Ill.

It’s shaping up to be another déjà vu week in the GOP race… With Romney’s Puerto Rico win, here’s NBC’s new delegate count: Romney 443, Santorum 184, Gingrich 137, Paul 34… Romney’s gas attack on Obama… McCain calls GOP race “the nastiest I have ever seen” (and that’s saying something)… Haley Barbour says he voted for Newt… Team Obama rakes in $45 million in February for campaign/DNC… Obama’s energy swing this week… Dem memo/poll: Lugar “fighting for his political life” in Indiana… And DCCC tries to make more hay out of Ryan, Medicare.

*** Deja vu: This is shaping up to be another déjà vu week in the GOP presidential race: Mitt Romney widens his delegate lead by winning all of Puerto Rico’s 20 delegates yesterday; Romney is poised to win Tuesday’s primary in Illinois, but it once again could be closer than all of Romney’s advantages (money, organization, front-runner status) suggest; and Rick Santorum continues to have a problem qualifying for a full slate of delegates (raising the question of whether Romney would still have a commanding lead if he didn’t face such a disorganized challenger). Campaigning in Illinois yesterday, Romney responded to his Puerto Rico win: "Those people who don't think Latinos will vote for a Republican need to take a look in Puerto Rico and see there that conservative principles and Latino voters go together -- and that Hispanic voters are going to vote for Republicans if we stand for something.” But a little caveat: Those Puerto Ricans who voted in yesterday’s GOP primary CAN’T participate in November’s general election.

*** NBC’s delegate count: After Romney’s victory in Puerto Rico yesterday, here’s NBC’s official delegate count: Romney 443, Santorum 184, Gingrich 137, Paul 34. (Note: This delegate count doesn’t reflect some caucus results, since those delegates haven’t been officially allocated yet and since the allocation will NOT be based on the straw votes that have taken place.) And get this fun fact: Romney has won 52 out of 54 possible delegates in all of the U.S. territories (Guam/Northern Mariana/U.S. Virgin Islands/America Samoa/Puerto Rico) that have participated in the GOP race -- and that represents 20 percent of his delegate lead over Santorum. Wow … just another reminder why organization matters.

*** Romney gas attack: Also yesterday, Romney leveled a new charge at President Obama. "There's one promise he's kept, one promise he's kept. When he campaigned he said he wanted to raise the price of gasoline.” But NBC’s Garrett Haake reported that independent fact-checkers have found that charge to be false. In a Jan. 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, then-candidate Obama said his cap-and-trade plan would cause electricity costs to rise, but he did not reference gas prices. At a second event, Romney corrected himself. "[Obama’s] one promise that comes to mind that he kept was the one related to energy. His energy policies he said would cause energy prices to skyrocket. And when asked one time about gas prices going up so quickly he said he would prefer they just went up gradually. Well we’ve seen the results of his policies." But Romney is wrong here again too, Haake says. The "policies" he is technically referring to, which Obama said would cause electricity prices to skyrocket, was cap-and-trade, which was never implemented.

*** McCain calls GOP race “the nastiest I have ever seen”: On “Meet the Press,” John McCain -- who has endorsed Romney -- summed up the conventional wisdom about the Republican primary race so far: It has hurt the GOP and Romney. “Mitt Romney will tell you, first of all, he's got to do a better job. He's working on doing a better job. He's got to focus more on the economy. He's been giving major speeches on the economy and jobs. And I think he is improving dramatically as a candidate,” McCain said. “But also, the proportional distribution of the delegates, any campaign before, we had winner take all. If it was winner take all, you would have seen those numbers significantly different. Also, the Super PACs have played a key role, unfortunately in my view, because most of them are negative ads. They've driven up the unfavorable of all of the candidates and made it much more difficult, frankly, to win the election in November.” He later added, “This is the nastiest [campaign] I have ever seen.” The fact that McCain -– who was the subject of a nasty attack in 2000 and who launched some tough attack ads of his own in ’08 -- is saying this means something

*** Barbour says he voted for Newt: Here’s another gut punch for Romney: Former Mississippi Gov. -- and onetime potential presidential candidate -- Haley Barbour said he voted for Gingrich in last week’s primary, citing his friendship with Gingrich. We’ve noticed so many big-name conservatives continue to stay on the sidelines (Barbour/Daniels/Jeb/Ryan, etc.). And it makes us wonder: What are they waiting for? They are not still debating between Romney and Santorum are they? Or Gingrich? Are they so afraid that coming out for Romney now COULD look bad for them with conservatives four years from now? Could some of these folks really be so calculating about how “supporting Romney” could look in a primary TV ad four years from now that they are afraid of going out on this limb in 2012? Or are they actually holding back because they think it’s only 50-50 that Romney gets to 1144 by June 5?

*** On the trail: All the activity is in Illinois and with just two candidates: Romney starts off his day in Springfield, gives an economic speech in Chicago and holds a town hall in Peoria … Santorum has rallies in Rockford, Moline and East Peoria.

*** Team Obama rakes in $45 million-plus in February, up from last month: On President Obama's official Twitter account this morning, the campaign announced that it raised more than $45 million -- for the campaign and DNC -- in the month of February. It added that amount came from more than 348,000 donors (105,000 giving for the first time), and the average donation was $59. To put that $45 million February haul into perspective, Team Obama raised $29 million in January, including $11.9 million for the campaign (with the rest going to the DNC and the Obama Victory Fund). And in comparison, Romney has already released his February fundraising total -- $11.5 million (that's strictly campaign money). Note: We won't know until the campaign officially files with the Federal Election Commission (the deadline is tomorrow) what the actual campaign vs. DNC split is. In 2008, however, Obama raised a whopping $57 million for his campaign in February, although that haul came during his historic primary battle against Hillary Clinton. Bottom line: Obama’s money situation continues to be GOOD, but not GREAT (at least by the 2008 standard; just see this Washington Post piece).

*** Obama’s energy swing: Given the heat on gas prices he’s taking from Romney (see above) and the Republican Party, Obama is making an energy-related swing this week “to promote and defend his energy policies -- including his approach to the Keystone XL pipeline,” USA Today writes. “Obama travels Wednesday and Thursday for energy events in Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio, as well as Cushing, Oklahoma; Cushing is the starting point for the southern half of the Keystone pipeline. That segment ‘will transport oil from Cushing to the Gulf of Mexico, which will help address the bottleneck of oil that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production in the Midwest,’ said a White House statement.” Per NBC’s Shawna Thomas, this continues a pattern of Obama’s official outside-D.C. events focusing mostly on energy since late February. Actions speak louder than words, and it’s clear the Obama White House is worried, BIG TIME, about the politics of the energy and gas price issue.

*** Lugar “fighting for his political life” in Indiana: The pollster for Joe Donnelly (D), who is running for the U.S. Senate in Indiana, has released a survey showing that incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar leads his GOP primary opponent Richard Mourdock by just six points, 45 percent to 39 percent. From the pollster’s memo: “After more than 30 years as Indiana’s senator, Richard Lugar is fighting for his political life. Despite spending millions, Lugar continues to lose ground in the Republican primary and faces the very real possibility that on May 8, he will be out of a job.” But it’s also striking that the memo doesn’t reveal any of Donnelly’s poll numbers against either Lugar or Donnelly.

*** DCCC tries to make hay out of Ryan, Medicare: With House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan releasing his new budget this week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says it’s launching “a new paid and grass-roots campaign called “Medicare March” in 41 Republican districts to hold them accountable for the new GOP budget that chooses “Millionaires over Medicare.” More from the DCCC: “The first phase of the DCCC’s campaign will hold these targeted Republicans accountable with automated phone calls that will patch voters through to their Member of Congress' office so they can urge them to vote against the new Republican budget that ends the Medicare guarantee for seniors, while protecting tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.” 

Countdown to Illinois primary: 1 day
Countdown to Louisiana primary: 5 days
Countdown to Election Day: 232 days

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