Marco Rubio’s rise within the Republican Party, just two years since his election to the Senate, has played out at head-spinning speed.

The 41-year-old, Cuban-American junior senator from Florida, has carefully navigated a choppy political environment in the two years since he was first elected.

And now the Republican rock star gets his moment in the spotlight when he delivers the official response to the State of the Union address delivered minutes earlier by President Barack Obama – another political rock star whose meteoric ascent invites inevitable parallels for Rubio.

Virtually every step of Rubio’s budding career has been scrutinized closely for what it might mean for his future political prospects. And after maintaining a deliberately low profile for much of his first 24 months as a senator, Rubio has begun to embrace the spotlight, including Tuesday’s coveted job of delivering the official Republican response to the president.

Nicholas Kamm / AFP - Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio speaks at the BuzzFeed Brews newsmaker event in Washington on Feb. 5, 2013.

The intense focus on Rubio reflects the speed of his ascendancy within the Republican Party, an institution in search of a new, compelling leader after losing two consecutive presidential elections by wide margins.

The State of the Union response is generally sought by political leaders hoping to increase their national profile, even though the slot is more often fraught with the risk of political misfortune.

“Marco has to articulate a clear and optimistic vision for growth in America but at the same time present a clear alternative to President Obama's call for a big, centralized government,” said Ana Navarro, a Florida Republican strategist.

But accomplishing that goal could be difficult, even for a well-spoken politician like Rubio.

“It's an opportunity to be seen and heard by the nation but you run the risk that if you bomb, it'll be on your tombstone,” Navarro said. “Marco is an eloquent speaker, an extraordinary orator. But this is the toughest gig in politics, by far. Following the president of the United States at the [State of the Union], which is full of pomp, circumstance and tradition, it's not an easy task.”

Rubio’s importance to the Republican Party is practically assumed at this point. When reports emerged in June that suggested Rubio had been left off Mitt Romney’s short-list of running mates, the GOP presidential nominee had to hastily stage a statement to declare that the Florida senator was being “thoroughly vetted” for the job.

Now, the Floridian has a chance to add another notch his burgeoning political belt.

Rubio has most recently shouldered the burden of selling a comprehensive immigration reform framework – which he helped craft as a member of a bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senatorial group – to skeptical conservatives.

He has made the rounds on conservative talk radio to talk-up the plan, which includes a proposal to give undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship. A similar plan earned President George W. Bush a rebuke from the right. But many of those same critics are now praising Rubio for his work, even if they haven't endorsed the proposal.

Rubio is expected to address immigration in his State of the Union response, but as part of a broader discussion about growing the economy and helping the middle class, according to an aide to the senator.

"He’ll explain why President Obama’s call for big government is bad for the middle class, and why limited but effective government will grow our economy and create jobs," the aide said.

Democrats are casting Rubio’s expected speech as little more than a rehash of staid Republican proposals.

“While the president will offer new ideas and an agenda for the next year to continue to grow our economy and broaden opportunity for the middle class, Sen. Rubio and the Republican Party – despite their desire to learn to be a ‘happy’ party that just needs to smile more – will continue to offer Americans more of the same failed policies that were rejected by the American people last November,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

Indeed, part of Rubio’s task involves advancing a broader Republican effort to make the party more appealing to a changing electorate, especially after Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic or Latino vote in his re-election bid last fall.

Rubio’s popularity in Republican circles is undoubtedly tied to his status as one of the most prominent elected Latino officials in either party. Rubio is writing the remarks himself, per his aide, and will deliver them in both English and Spanish – the first time the same person has delivered the official response in both languages.

(Rubio will tape the Spanish-language version beforehand, and deliver the English version live on national television.)

Still, Rubio’s rise – and, with it, the speculation about whether he’ll run for president in 2016 – comes well before the next election. There are plenty of pitfalls and challenges to sustaining momentum awaiting the Florida senator in the next few years.

But a scant two years of federal experience hasn't always been a limitation when a politician is eyeing the presidency a full four years out from the next election. Just ask Barack Obama.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will deliver Republicans' response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday, GOP leaders announced Wednesday.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., selected Rubio -- an influential Latino conservative who was first elected in 2010 -- to speak for Republicans in their official response to the president's speech.

The State of the Union response slot is often seen as a potential launching platform for politicians who harbor national ambitions; fittingly, Rubio is one of the most-hyped figures in the GOP, and is thought to have designs on the party's presidential nomination in 2016. The honor carries a degree of risk, however: many past figures to deliver their party's response have been panned for their performance.

Nicholas Kamm / AFP - Getty Images

Republican Sen. from Florida Marco Rubio speaks at the BuzzFeed Brews newsmaker event in Washington on February 5, 2013.

“I’m honored to have this opportunity to discuss how limited government and free enterprise have helped make my family’s dreams come true in America,” the Florida senator said in a statement. “Limited government and free enterprise are the very foundation of what makes America special and separates us from the world, particularly through our strong middle class.  I look forward to laying out the Republican case of how our ideas can help people close the gap between their dreams and the opportunities to realize them.”

Rubio has also helped take the lead recently in working with a bipartisan group of senators to craft a comprehensive immigration reform bill that allows a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Rubio has worked to sell that legislation to conservatives, just as immigration is sure to figure prominently in Obama's yearly address on Tuesday.

"His speech will focus on the Republican Party's agenda to grow the middle class," a Rubio aide said. "Immigration will likely be mentioned as one way to grow the economy, but the speech really is about the Republican Party's commitment to limited government as the best way to help the middle class, and how it differs from the President's plans for bigger government."

"Marco Rubio is one of our party’s most dynamic and inspiring leaders. He carries our party’s banner of freedom, opportunity and prosperity in a way few others can. His family’s story is a testament to the promise and greatness of America,” Boehner said in a statement. 

Added McConnell: "Marco Rubio embodies the optimism that lies at the heart of the Republican vision for America. On Tuesday, he will contrast the Republican approach to the challenges we face with President Obama’s vision of an ever-bigger government and the higher taxes that would be needed to pay for it."

Updated 3:34 p.m. ET - President Barack Obama hailed the Senate's bipartisan immigration framework at a major speech on that topic this afternoon in Nevada, but threatened to send his own alternative legislation to Capitol Hill if Congress fails to act.

The president embraced of a statement of principles offered Monday by four Democratic and four Republican senators, which would strengthen border security and employment verification in exchange for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the United States.

"The good news is that -- for the first time in many years -- Republicans and Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together," Obama said in his speech in Las Vegas, according to prepared excerpts.

Jason Reed / Reuters

President Barack Obama arrives in Las Vegas, Jan. 29. Obama arrived in Nevada to deliver remarks on immigration reform.

"And yesterday, a bipartisan group of senators announced their principles for comprehensive immigration reform, which are very much in line with the principles I've proposed and campaigned on for the last few years," the president also said. "At this moment, it looks like there's a genuine desire to get this done soon. And that's very encouraging."

But in a speech in Nevada -- a Southwestern state that has experienced a boom in its Hispanic population -- the president said he refused to allow comprehensive immigration reform "to get bogged down in an endless debate."

"It's important for us to realize that the foundation for bipartisan action is already in place," he said. If lawmakers fail to advance their own proposal, Obama said he would send legislation to Congress based on his own principles "and insist that they vote on it right away."

He said at the top of his speech: "I'm here because the time has come for common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform."

The president used Tuesday's speech in Nevada to outline many of those principles, which rest on four pillars: strengthening border security, cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers, streamlining legal immigration and -- most importantly -- offering undocumented workers an earned path to citizenship. 

Those pillars mostly resemble the bipartisan Senate framework unveiled on Monday by lawmakers, which has prompted hopes that Congress would finally be able to advance a comprehensive immigration reform law, a priority that eluded Obama during his first term, and President George W. Bush before him.

The primary sticking point in those fights has been the pathway to citizenship, which conservatives deride as "amnesty" for those who have broken the law. Already, some prominent conservatives have expressed their skepticism of the Senate framework for exactly that reason.

"Yes, they broke the rules," Obama said of those undocumented immigrants. "They crossed the border illegally. Maybe they overstayed their visas. But these 11 million men and women are now here."

Republicans in particular had been closely watching Obama's actions for cues as to how the administration might handle immigration, and the emerging Senate deal. Republican lawmakers have openly worried that the president might stake out stark positions and oppose some of the enforcement measures included in the Senate framework, namely the trigger that would only allow a pathway to citizenship once the border enforcement mechanisms had been verified. 

"There are a lot of ideas about how best to fix our broken immigration system," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Any solution should be a bipartisan one, and we hope the President is careful not to drag the debate to the left and ultimately disrupt the difficult work that is ahead in the House and Senate."

But Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a rock star to conservatives who's seen as eyeing a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, has taken an active lead in selling this proposal to the right. Rubio has appeared in conservative media to both discourage Obama from opposing enforcement provisions, but also talk up the proposal as the best chance at compromise for Republicans.

"If, in fact, this bill does not have real triggers in there -- in essence, if there's not language in this bill that guarantees that nothing else happens unless these enforcement mechanisms are in place -- then I won't support it," Rubio, a member of the bipartisan gang of eight, told conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday. "But the principles clearly call for that."

But the president generally spoke in broad terms, and did not draw any bright lines as it relates to the Senate proposal. 

"I believe we are finally at a moment where comprehensive immigration reform is finally within our grasp," he said.

A bipartisan group of senators formally unveiled an immigration reform framework that they hope the Senate could pass "in overwhelming and bipartisan fashion" by late spring or early summer.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday on Capitol Hill, five of the eight members of a bipartisan working group announced the contours of their agreement, which would shore up America's borders and provide an eventual path to citizenship for undocumented workers.

"We still have a long way to go, but this bipartisan grouping is a major breakthrough," New York Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democratic member of the group of eight, said Monday afternoon.

Schumer, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, set an ambitious goal of translating the statement of principles released Sunday evening by the senators into legislation by March. He said the Senate would try to approve the legislation for consideration in the House by the end of spring, or early summer.

The major development involves the pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers that would be established under the Senate plan. Conservatives have resisted similar proposals -- even when they were proposed by President George W. Bush -- and labeled them as "amnesty" for individuals who entered the United States illegally.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that Americans "have been too content for too long" to allow many undocumented workers to provide basic services "while not affording them any of the benefits that make our country so great."

"It is not beneficial to this country to have these people here, hidden in the shadows," added McCain, whose own experience on the issue of immigration provides an instructive example of why immigration reform has been so elusive for Congress.

McCain had long been one of the most vocal advocates of a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers, but tempered his opinions in recent years amid conservative scrutiny. As he was fighting off a conservative primary challenger in 2010, McCain appeared in a television ad saying it was time to "build the danged fence" -- a reference to the proposed fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, which is favored by a number of Republicans.

The senators' announcement on Monday comes a day before President Barack Obama was set to make a major policy address on Tuesday in Nevada on the topic of immigration. While Obama had not been expected to outline any formal legislation during his remarks, lawmakers from both parties will carefully parse the president's words for their impact on the immigration debate. Schumer said that he had spoken to the president about the Senate framework, and that the president was "delighted" by it.

Obama himself had vowed to achieve comprehensive immigration reform during his first term, but his efforts were stymied. That failure invited a degree of consternation from the Latino community during last year's presidential campaign, even though Obama had taken executive action to halt the deportation of individuals who were illegally brought to the United States as children.

(That order, made by Obama last summer, sought to effectively enact much of the DREAM Act, a piece of legislation that failed in the Senate as recently as 2010, when some Republicans who'd previously supported the law flipped, and voted against it.)

Indeed, the success of this push in the Senate may well hinge on Republicans' willingness to go along with a plan that gives undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, an influential House Republican, already labeled the Senate framework as "amnesty" in a statement on Monday.

House GOP leaders were otherwise mum on Monday toward the Senate proposal, though top Republicans have previously expressed a preference for tackling immigration in a piecemeal manner.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a member of the eight-member group and a favorite of conservatives, has worked to gather conservative support for the proposal. He said at Monday's press conference that while no one is happy about the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, "We have an obligation and need to address the reality that we face."

The other factor weighing upon Republicans involves their poor performance among Hispanic voters -- a bloc that is growing in importance in a variety of key battleground states -- during last fall's election.

"The Republican Party is losing support of our Hispanic citizens," McCain said Monday in a nod toward a variable that could convince more GOP lawmakers to support this bipartisan proposal. But, McCain noted, "We're not going to get everybody onboard."

In the meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged to "do everything in [his] power as the majority leader to get a bill across the finish line."

"Nothing short of bipartisan success is acceptable to me," he said in remarks on the Senate floor preceding the group of eight's press conference.

"What Hillary Clinton's health means for 2016?" "No obvious 2016 GOP leader." "Obama Is Boosting Biden's 2016 Prospects."

At least 154 weeks before the first presidential nominating contests of the 2016 election, news headlines offer a carnival of speculation about the pressing matter of who will next ascend to the White House when the not-yet-inaugurated president departs from D.C. in a mere 1,464 days.

Really? Really. 

After the lengthy 2012 presidential campaign -- with its daily news cycles often accelerated by 140-character Twitter news parcels -- the forward-looking speculation fills a void for political professionals, pundits and news consumers uninterested in the machinations of ongoing congressional policy negotiations, experts note. 

"Presidents become lame ducks very quickly," said Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth College political scientist and media critic who writes for the Columbia Journalism Review. "There's a lot of legislative action now but it's often difficult to get much done in a second term, so attention tends to shift pretty quickly to succession." 

And there's beginning to be some data to talk about. 

Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton smiles as President Barack Obama mentions her name during a news conference with Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi after a meeting in in Yangon in this Nov. 19, 2012 file photograph.

It took just one month after the 2012 election for North Carolina-based polling outfit Public Policy Polling to test the favorability of 17 could-be presidential candidates, from the ubiquitous Clinton and Marco Rubio -- who lead the Democratic and Republican packs respectively -- to the nationally unknown governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer. 

Related: GOP assesses path back to power

"There's a lot of people who just aren't that interested in fiscal cliff negotiations and that sort of thing, and they're still kind of winding down from the presidential race," said pollster Tom Jensen. "To some extent we're feeding the beast, and that's a role we're willing to fill." 

Jensen pointed out that, while national polling this early in the presidential game isn't particularly useful in predicting the actual outcome of the years-away contest, his polling outfit is gradually building a useful record of how possible candidates' public images have changed over time.

A casual look back at early polling confirms that premature beauty contests between potential candidates -- if taken as mere snapshots and not as trends -- are most likely to be wistful or droll than visionary. 

A Time poll taken in January 2007 showed a likely 2008 general election match-up between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. (The latter ended up spending a whopping $48.8 million in his failed presidential bid, which ultimately won only one national delegate.) In February 2011, Gallup numbers showed a statistical tie for the GOP nomination between eventual nominee Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. (Neither Palin nor Huckabee even entered the 2012 race.) As late as April of 2011, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed billionaire and noted Twitter mischief-maker Donald Trump tied for second place in the hypothetical Republican nomination race. 

A single poll now isn't likely to be any more accurate by Election Day 2016, said Jensen, although it will provide a useful baseline to track the eventual nominees' ascension to the top of the heap. 

"Clearly, we're not claiming that any of the polling we're doing right now is terribly predictive, because we don't even know who's going to run," Jensen said of early 2016 surveys. "But I think it's perfectly harmless to be accumulating this record. And if nothing else, people find it interesting." 

Much of that interest focuses on Clinton, who emerged from a vitriolic 2008 primary against Barack Obama with her public image among Democrats somewhat remarkably unscathed. Her popularity outside the party has soared as well, hitting above the 50 percent mark with independents and at a quarter with Republicans in the latest NBC/WSJ poll. Unlike any of the other contenders -- other than possibly Vice President Joe Biden -- she also has nearly universal name recognition, making chatter easy and relatively low-risk for lovers of the horse race. 

"By most accounts, Hillary Clinton would be the preemptive savior on the Democratic side, and she has this unbelievably complex and interesting political history," said Nyhan. "It's hard for people to avoid getting into that, as premature as it may be. She's catnip to the media." 

And Clinton is in the news, with recent health troubles and the bubbling controversy over the September consulate attack in Benghazi giving commentators plenty of pegs to discuss the political future of the outgoing secretary of state. It doesn't hurt that popular former President Bill Clinton has a penchant for appearing at high-profile events; he recently popped up at the Golden Globes. 

There's also Biden. A visible right-hand man to the president, Biden has two presidential runs under his belt and can boast negotiating credentials over the fiscal cliff and gun control issues in recent months. It's not clear yet that Biden, who will be 73 in November 2016, will definitely make a run for the office that's eluded him during his long political career, but his penchant for colorful language (some would say 'gaffes') makes him constant headline-fodder at least until he makes a public indication of whether or not he may run. 

Another reason for the 2016 talk may be that the people most likely to be speculating about the next presidential campaign are those most likely to spend, gamble, or make money on it.

The 2012 campaign blew out previous records for spending, with each side raising over a billion dollars. Outside groups spent well over $500 million to influence the results, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.  Potential consultants, donors and operatives have a vested interest in mapping out the maze of political dominoes that, in their various patterns, determine which standard-bearers are the best bets for paychecks and payoffs.  

And that's nothing new. Early pre-election coalition-building dates back far into the nation's history, notes Hans Noel, a professor of government at Georgetown University and an expert on political primaries. He notes that early behind-the-scenes planning was already a well-established part of the political process by the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose emissaries traveled across the country with records of Roosevelt's speeches to play for potential supporters. 

"Early polls really have no meaning at all at this point, but they're going to drive media coverage of this conversation," Noel said. "The media conversation and the insider conversation overlap but they are separate. And the insider conversation is probably more predictive and meaningful." 

Predictive or not, haters will have to steel themselves for three more years of the media conversation in an environment where it's never too early for the kind of low-risk predictions that the chattering class really loves. 

Because at the end of the day, no matter who the nominees are, it's all going to come down to turnout. 

If Republicans didn’t know it before, they learned in the November elections how serious a problem they have in winning Latino voters. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won only 27 percent of self-identified Latino voters, according to exit poll interviews.

Steve Pope / Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks at a combination fundraiser and birthday party for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, on Nov. 17, 2012 in Altoona, Iowa.

As Republicans make their case to Latinos and with one prominent Latino Republican, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a possible contender for the 2016 presidential nomination, long-stalled measures to increase immigration and give legal status to people illegally in the United States will be on the congressional agenda in 2013.

On immigration, the lame-duck session of Congress is a time for political positioning and strategizing rather than legislating. Along with all his other strategic challenges, House Speaker John Boehner has to figure out just far he and a majority of his GOP members are willing to go on immigration and which of his members in the new Congress will need to be given a free pass on tough roll call votes so that they don’t get challenged by conservatives in Republican primaries in 2014.

Meanwhile this week Republican senators urged Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid to allow the Senate to vote on a bill passed by the House last week that would provide legal residency to more foreigners who have earned doctorates or master’s degrees in science, technology, engineering or math at U.S. universities. The House-passed bill, which won the support of 27 Democrats, would create new visa categories for 55,000 science, engineering and mathematics graduates of American universities and it would eliminate a visa lottery program designed to increase immigration from counties which traditionally haven’t been big sources of U.S. immigrants.

Sen., John Cornyn, R- Texas, told the Senate Wednesday that it makes no sense for the United States to not allow foreign scientists who get their Ph.D.’s at American universities to remain in this country to work. “We are cultivating human capital and then sending those individuals back home” to their countries of origin, when many of them would rather remain in America,” Cornyn said. 

Romney made this same argument during his second debate with President Barack Obama, calling for giving legal permanent resident status “to people who graduate with skills that we need. People around the world with accredited degrees in science and math (ought to) get a green card stapled to their diploma, come to the U.S. of A. We should make sure our legal system works.”

But Clarissa Martinez de Castro, director of civic engagement and immigration at the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Latino advocacy group, criticized the House bill as “trying to eviscerate one program to feed another – as opposed to trying to fix the entire system.”

The relative smallness of the number of visas in the House bill, 55,000, she said, “tells you right away that we’re just tinkering around the edges. What really is begging to be addressed here is making sure the system works.”

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She said the core of the immigration redesign next year will be “the legalization and path to citizenship for the people who are already in the country.” That makes sense, she said, because “you cannot build on a faulty foundation. And the reality is we have a number of people who have been in the country for a very long time. They are part of the workforce and it makes sense to figure out that piece and how the other pieces develop from that one.”

A leading Democrat on immigration policy, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, told reporters at the Capitol Thursday, “The best way to go is a comprehensive package. What we’ve learned in the past is when you try to do it piecemeal, the pieces fall apart.”

Matt York / AP

In this Nov. 6, 2012 file photo, Sen.-elect, current Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., waves during an election night party in Phoenix.

In the Senate next year, Republican senator-elect Jeff Flake of Arizona (one of the co-sponsors of immigration reform in 2006) and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah will likely be key GOP deal makers, as well as Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Ultimately members of Congress will need to grapple with a crucial policy question: what should be the balance between immigration based on family ties and immigration based on a person’s expertise, education, and training. Should the United States bring in more people with doctorates in biochemistry, for example, and fewer who happen to have a brother or other relative in the United States?

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What Romney tried to do during the campaign was to convey the idea that he was open to immigration but that it had to be done through legal means. Rubio repeated this theme Wednesday in remarks at a POLITICO breakfast. His party, Rubio said, had “allowed itself to be positioned as the anti-illegal (immigrant) party…. What we really need to be is the pro-legal (immigrant) party.”

At the center of Democratic initiatives on immigration for several years has been the DREAM Act, a bill offered by Sen. Dick Durbin, D- Ill., and others to allow illegal immigrants brought to the United States by their parents before age 16 to stay legally in the country. Durbin’s bill would require these people to earn a high school diploma, submit biometric data and undergo a law enforcement background check. His bill would allow such people to eventually apply for permanent legal residence and, after an additional three years, apply for citizenship.

When the Senate voted on the DREAM Act at the end of 2010, three Democrats who are all up for re-election in 2014, Sens. Max Baucus of Montana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, all voted against ending debate, supporting Republican efforts to kill the bill by means of filibuster. Two other Democrats, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, also voted against cloture and the effort fell five votes short. (Nelson is retiring at the end of this year.)

The political calculus next year might be different if the DREAM Act provisions are embedded within a larger bill, perhaps one with incentives that could appeal to senators from conservative states such as Arkansas and Montana. In the immigration vote tally, both sides of the equation – Democrats and Republican – will be important.

TAMPA, FL -- Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney reined in his criticism of President Barack Obama on Wednesday, signaling a softer tone at the outset of a three-stop swing through Florida coinciding with the president's trip to New Jersey to survey hurricane damage.

Returning to the campaign trail after cancelling several campaign events out of respect to victims of Hurricane Sandy, Romney joined several prominent Florida Republicans in blending a pitch for storm recovery support with more traditional political fanfare.

In his first formal campaign event (Romney morphed one planned stop in Ohio into a "relief event" on Tuesday), Romney struck hopeful notes.

"You should know I could not be in this race if I were not an optimist. I believe in the future of this country I know we have huge challenges, but I’m not frightened by them, I’m invigorated by the challenge," Romney told supporters gathered in an airplane hangar here near the close of his remarks. "We’re going to take on these challenges we’re going to overcome them!"

And Romney included an entreaty for donations to the Red Cross as the East Coast reels from the impact of the hurricane earlier this week. (Romney himself made a donation to the Red Cross, an aide told NBC News.)

"If you have an extra dollar or two, send them along and keep the people who are in harms – who have been in harms way, who’ve been damaged either personally or through their property, keep them in your thoughts and prayers," Romney said. "We love all of our fellow citizens.  We come together in times like this and we want to make sure that they have a speedy and quick recovery from their financial and in many cases, personal loss."

Romney was joined on the trail by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the latter of whom noted that Floridians are more familiar with hurricanes than most of the nation, and urged the roughly 2,000 attendees here to pay back the generosity they have experienced after past storms.

"People are going to be living with the aftermath of the storm, and so our hearts and our prayers go out to them, and also our help," Rubio said. "If you see on the screen the number you can text the Red Cross and make your donation. We have been the beneficiary of these donations in the past. Let's make sure we pay it forward for our neighbors and fellow Americans up north who are suffering."

Bush, who had to handle numerous hurricanes during his time as governor, also waded into the politics of disaster relief, suggesting that local governments contributed more to recovery efforts than the federal government.

"My experience in all this emergency response business is that it is the local level and the state level that really matters," he said to applause. "That if they do their job right the federal government part works out pretty good."

Brian Snyder / Reuters

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney greets audience members at a campaign rally in Tampa, Florida October 31, 2012.

But today's event was certainly a return to the issues that have driven the campaign for the last year -- with Romney criticizing the president's stewardship of the economy indirectly, and offering his own plan in contrast.

“My view is pretty straight forward and that is I believe that this is time for America to take a different course, that this should be a turning point for our country, and I say that because I look at where we are and with 23 million Americans – you think about that. These are real people. These are folks trying to put food on the table," Romney said. "Twenty-three million people struggling to find a good job. This is something that requires in my view a different path than we’ve been on."

Slideshow: On the campaign trail

Reuters, Getty Images

In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

Launch slideshow

PENSACOLA, FL -- Campaigning in this famous Navy town on Florida's panhandle, Mitt Romney returned to a topic from last week's final presidential debate, slamming the president for proposed defense cuts and pushing his plan to expand the US naval fleet.

“In 2010, then-President Obama came to Pensacola. You probably weren’t there, but some folks were. And he took pride in saying, and I quote, that he had halted reductions in the Navy. That’s what he said. But today, he again has shrunk to a smaller version of the Navy and his view of the Navy’s role," Romney told a crowd of 10,000 supporters here Saturday, setting the scene.

Related: Romney turns Obama's attacks back against the president

"You may recall in our most recent debate I made the point that our Navy is now smaller than any time well, in almost a hundred years, and the president’s response was, well, you know, we don’t use bayonets and horses anymore. And, uh, in fact we do use bayonets, and a modern Navy is one of the critical elements that allows us to protect sea lanes and to keep the world more free and prosperous," Romney said.

Slideshow: On the campaign trail

Reuters, Getty Images

In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

Launch slideshow

The former Massachusetts governor has made increasing the size and role of the Navy a cornerstone of his military policy. Here in Pensacola, home to a major Naval installation where former GOP presidential candidate John McCain went to flight school, his plan for the Navy took on an outsize role in what was otherwise a largely boilerplate stump speech.

"I believe in a modern Navy. That’s why my plan is to increase the number of ships we’re building to maintain our strong commitment to our military," Romney said. "His vision is not greatness in America’s Navy or America’s military. His vision is to cut our military spending by a trillion dollars. And by the way, a trillion dollars in cuts would cost about 41,000 jobs here in Florida, and think of all the businesses that depend on all those jobs. It’s extraordinary, but the president’s agenda keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller.”

Saturday is the first day for early voting in Florida, a key battleground state that is pivotal to Romney's chances of taking the White House in 10 days. While Romney himself did not mention early voting in his remarks, both Sen. Marco Rubio and Senate hopeful Rep. Connie Mack urged supporters to cast their ballots right away.

"You know today is the first day of early voting, so when you're done here today, what are you going to do?" Mack asked, as the crowd shouted back "Vote!"

"You're gonna go out and vote and then you're gonna call your friends, you're gonna call your neighbors, you're gonna call your family. No matter where they are, tell them to get out to vote." 

News this morning on the polling front as Chuck Todd debuted fresh numbers from our NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll showing a dead heat between Mitt Romney and President Obama. They are currently tied at 47%, a number Chuck said should worry team Obama as election day gets closer. 

Two top Romney campaign supporters this morning were also happy about those numbers. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) told David, "The trend is in our direction... The enthusiasm and energy are on our side." Similarly, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) said, he likes the way his home state is shifting towards Romney and added "I think [the polls are] only going to get better for the Republican side, both in Florida and nationally, as we move forward."

David Axelrod, chief re-election strategist to the president, responded to the latest poll numbers: "We feel good about where we are." He cited both strong numbers in specific battleground state polls as well as early voting numbers that he argued "have been very favorable" to the Obama campaign. 

Also, just 36 hours before the third and final presidential debate, we had a robust conversation on foreign policy with the roundtable. David was joined by Democratic Strategist and Former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers; Republican strategist Mike Murphy; NY Times Columnist Tom Friedman; and NY Times White House Correspondent Helene Cooper, who along with colleague Mark Landler, broke a story in today's NY Times saying that Iran and the U.S. government have agreed in principle to one-on-one talks over Tehran's nuclear enrichment program.

You can watch the entire program on our website including our full conversations with Senators Rubio and Portman, as well as David Axelrod.

We'll be back next week. If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press. 

Republicans said momentum is on Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's side as a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Romney drawing even with President Barack Obama.

As the 2012 election enters its home stretch — 16 days and one final presidential debate remain before Election Day — Obama and Romney were tied at 47 percent among likely voters nationwide.

"I like what I see, because the trend is in our direction," said Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, a top surrogate for the Romney campaign. "The enthusiasm and energy are on our side."

NBC/WSJ poll: Presidential contest now tied

Romney has closed the gap versus Obama in a series of national and battleground state polls released since the first presidential debate earlier this month, when the Republican presidential nominee was generally acknowledged to have bested the president. The momentum for Romney has spurred Republican optimism that they may be able to defeat Obama, who's led his Republican challenger in most polls throughout the year. 

"We feel good about where we are. We feel we're even or ahead in these battleground states," said senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod about the new poll numbers. 

RELATED: Obama and Romney each emphasize early voting

The Romney resurgence must play out in a series of crucial battleground states — Florida, Ohio and Virginia, in particular — if the Republican challenger is to subsume Obama on Nov. 6. 

"We like the way Florida's going," said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of the movement in Romney's direction. "We've always predicted it would go this way."

Both Obama and Romney have barnstormed these battleground states in recent weeks, encouraging supporters to vote early and trying to persuade a winnowing sliver of undecided voters. 

Each campaign had evidence for optimism as of Sunday. Republicans circulated an editorial from the Columbus Dispatch of Ohio, which called the president "unsuited to a second term." Axelrod pointed to state-level polls — including the NBC/WSJ/Marist polls this Thursday, which showed Obama leading by eight points in Iowa and six in Wisconsin — as evidence of the president's Electoral College firewall. 

NBC/WSJ/Marist polls: Obama holds lead in Iowa and Wisconsin

The candidates will get their next opportunity to shake up those poll numbers on Monday evening, when they meet for their third and final debate of the election. That debate, which will be hosted at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., is supposed to focus primarily on issues of foreign policy. 

Obama and Romney have sparred most intensely on the topic of how the president and his administration have managed the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. 

Axelrod unleashed a harsh attack on Romney, accusing the GOP nominee of "disgraceful" behavior for releasing a statement shortly after the events in Benghazi, which essentially accused the administration of sympathizing with the attackers, and apologizing for American values. 

"There's only one candidate here who's tried to exploit it from the beginning," Axelrod said. "Even while the flames were burning in Benghazi, Mitt Romney was sending out political press releases."

The Republican nominee has latched onto the administration's shifting explanations for the attack to make the case that Obama was essentially caught off-guard by the attacks. The administration at first said the attacks were the spontaneous outgrowth of protests related to a controversial video, but has shifted to acknowledge the attack in Libya was coordinated by terrorists.

Romney has also argued the administration has been insufficiently tough toward Iran's nuclear program, an assertion that might be colored by a new New York Times report that the administration and the Iranian government had agreed to one-on-one negotiations after the election. The administration called the report untrue, and both Portman and Rubio declined to hit Obama on that basis. 

But, in anticipation of tomorrow's debate, Portman said: "I think what you're going to see is Gov. Romney lay out a clear agenda for how to get Iran to do the right thing."

"They're feeling the heat, and that's what the sanctions were meant to do," Axelrod said in defense of the administration's handling of Iran. The Obama campaign adviser also ridiculed Romney's foreign trip this past summer as a "Dukes of Hazzard  tour of international destinations."

The Obama campaign has also sought to reignite a battle over women's issues in the last week to bolster the president's advantage among women voters. Obama led Romney, 51 to 43 percent, among women in the new NBC/WSJ data, but that was a narrower advantage for Obama than in past editions of the poll. 

The president's campaign has sought to remind voters of Romney's promises to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, or his promises during primary season to sign legislation to curb access to abortion, should it cross his desk. The Obama campaign also seized on Romney's remarks during last Tuesday's debate that he had "binders full of women" prepared for him as governor to help increase gender diversity in his office.

Rubio argued those attacks masked a bereft second-term agenda from Obama, and that Romney had begun to close the gender gap by focusing on issues of jobs and the economy.

"You just read a poll that the gender gap is narrowing," Rubio said. "The reason why is because Barack Obama is not offering anything."