TAMPA, Fla. — No state has loomed larger in presidential politics in recent years as Florida, and this year is no exception.

Mitt Romney's path to the White House, like George W. Bush and John McCain before him, runs through Florida, the host to this week's Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Related: GOP elders describe high stakes for Romney in Tampa

The Sunshine State seems will assume just as important of a role in deciding the presidential election as it had in recent cycles, contributing to Republicans' decision to place their quadrennial gathering here, rather than other contending host cities: Phoenix and Salt Lake City.

"I think it's a huge advantage," said Florida Republican consultant Brian Hughes of the convention's placement. He noted that every network affiliate throughout the state would provide extensive coverage of the convention.

"It really energizes the base. You've got every key activist in the base on the Republican side engaged in this," Hughes said, adding that independent voters won't be able to escape the week's festivities and speeches, either.

Recommended: Some prominent Republicans won’t be in Tampa

Indeed, President Barack Obama and the Romney campaign -- joined by their supporting super PACs -- have already spent $110 million on advertising in Florida alone, according to NBC News ad-tracking sources, accounting for almost a fifth of all ad spending in the entire election. Team Romney and Team Obama are about even, at $55 million to date.

The GOP convention will be a carefully-staged operation engineered to selling the party and Romney to a national audience. But now, it will be a shortened affair after convention organizers canceled the first day of activities due to an impending hurricane.

But at the same time, Republicans hope the week full of fanfare and heavy local media coverage will help deliver Florida in November for Romney, for whom the path to 270 electoral votes is slim without this swing state. If Romney were to lose Florida, he would need to sweep every single of the 8 states rated a "toss-up" on NBC’s battleground map: Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Romney won the state's late January primary, and Florida, in many ways, serves as a microcosm for the general election.

Florida was one of the states hardest hit by the collapse of the housing market in 2008, sending the state spiraling into an especially deep recession. The unemployment rate for the state is 8.8 percent, higher than the national rate of 8.2 percent.

The economy in Florida "will likely be a real drag on President Obama," said Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor, whose district includes central Tampa.

"People's property values have not recovered, and if people had savings, it would have been in their home," she said. "For all the talk about jobs and innovation and education, people may look at what they're worth and decide on that basis."

But if the state is a perfect example of the dangers for Obama, it's also a state that illustrates some of the challenges that Romney most overcome.

Obama led Romney by three percent, 49 to 46 percent, in a Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll released last week. But Obama's lead is also built, in part, upon advantages he holds with women and Hispanics, mirroring his edge the president holds with those two groups nationally.

Obama leads 53 to 41 percent among Florida women, and 61 to 31 percent among Hispanics (despite the Republican sympathies of the state's large Cuban American population). To compare, in 2008, Obama beat Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) in Florida 52-47 percent among women voters, according to exit polls, and 57-42 percent among Latinos.

The convention's lineup will put some of the GOP's rising women and Latino leaders in the spotlight, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R), a conservative darling whom many conservatives Romney had hoped Romney would pick as his running mate. Rubio will introduce Romney before the presumptive Republican nominee's acceptance speech.

The convention will also give Romney and the rest of the Republican Party a chance to make their case for Medicare reforms in a state where seniors and retirees exert an outsized influence in elections.

Presumptive vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's two budgets as chairman of the House Budget Committee propose major changes to Medicare, principally by turning it into a system where seniors would receive a voucher — or premium support – to seek health insurance. (A later version of Ryan's plan would allow retirees to maintain traditional Medicare.)

The fact that Romney and Ryan have promised no changes for Americans over the age of 55 hasn't stopped Medicare from becoming a central issue in the campaign, even moreso in Florida. Ryan last weekend took his case on Medicare to seniors at The Villages, the sprawling retirement community just about two hours from Tampa.

And in the end, geography could prove decisive in determining the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes in November.

Hillsbrough Country — which encompasses Tampa — and adjacent Pinellas County — which includes much of St. Petersburg — have emerged as a bellwether for the rest of the state.

"I find it hard to think they'll speak to the hardworking voters here of central Florida," Castor said of the Romney-Ryan's regional appeal. "People are independent-minded…They would really have to moderate their message. What is their vision besides large tax cuts for corporate America and the top one or two percent?"

Even at the apex of his political strength, Obama only bested McCain by about 10,000 of 430,000 votes cast in Hillsbrough in 2008; Obama's 53-45 percent victory in Pinellas was more comfortable.

George W. Bush won Hillsbrough in both of his presidential campaigns, but split the difference in the slightly more Democratic Pinellas County. Bush lost Pinellas in 2000, but won by 226 votes in 2004.

"Every poll that's looked at Florida in recent weeks — at the core of them, they're all within the margins," Hughes said. "It's a dogfight."

There are worrying signs about the Republican brand nationally, just five days before the party gathers for its convention and 76 days before Election Day.

A majority of voters in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll called presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and GOP candidates for Congress "out of step" with most Americans' thinking compared to President Barack Obama and Democratic candidates.

And 29 percent of registered voters said they had "very negative" impressions of the Republican Party – the second-highest number of voters to give the most intensely negative assessment of the GOP in the history of the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, dating back to 1990.

The only other instance in which the “very negative” rating for the GOP surpassed that was in 2006, before Republicans received a drubbing at the polls.

The numbers underscore the headwinds facing Republicans heading into an election they're eager to win, and illustrate the stakes for the GOP next week in Tampa, where they'll have an opportunity to soften impressions of the party.

"It’s frustrating. This president has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to tag Republicans as the party of the rich and the 1 percent," said Frank Donatelli, the chairman of GOPAC, a group dedicated to training Republican candidates.

"Republicans need to push back even harder talking about growth and jobs," he said. "That is the issue of the election; we’ve gotten a little bit away from that."

Indeed, the campaign has been focused mostly on Medicare in the week and a half since Romney added Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan -- the author of a plan including controversial reforms to the entitlement program -- to the Republican ticket.

That focus was only eclipsed by the controversy this week involving Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, whose impolitic comments about abortion rights in the instance of rape threatened to raise a messy debate that could cost GOP candidates among women voters, with whom they already generally lag.

"Republicans have really gotten off-message in the last week and a half," said a veteran GOP operative well-versed in the party's campaign efforts. "If you’re Mitt Romney or a Republican candidate, you need to be operating within a message framework centered on economic issues, not on issues that are historically unfriendly to Republicans."

But the souring GOP brand likely has a longer tail than the last few weeks. A bloody presidential primary and congressional gridlock have contributed to a sense that Republicans don’t represent the mainstream.

Fifty-four percent of voters said that Republican candidates for Congress were out of step with the public, versus 38 percent who called them mainstream. By contrast, voters view Democratic candidates more evenly: 45 percent said Democratic congressional candidates were mainstream, and 48 percent called them out of step.

"The Republican brand has become the opposite of what the middle class is looking for," said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

He pointed to House Republicans' votes to approve Ryan’s controversial budgets, and repeated votes to repeal health care reform -- among other instances of legislative gridlock -- as contributing to a decline in the GOP's image.

To that end, Democrats opened up an advantage over Republicans on the question of the generic ballot -- which party voters generally prefer to control Congress -- in the August NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Forty-seven percent of voters said they prefer Democratic control of Congress, and 42 percent support GOP control; a one or two-point margin had separated the parties on that question since April.

Several Republicans who spoke for this story expressed concern that Romney's selecting Ryan as a running mate had needlessly made Medicare a central issue in the campaign. While Republicans had expected to fight on that issue, and had sought to inoculate themselves from having voted for Ryan's controversial budgets, some questioned the wisdom of having spent much of the last week and a half fighting on that issue -- one usually favorable to Democrats -- rather than the economy.

But voters’ adverse impression of Republicans might not translate to losses in Congress, at least in the House. Most election prognosticators have said their models don’t predict the kind of Democratic wave in the House that would deliver the net gain of 25 seats they need to retake control.

Brian Snyder / Reuters

Several Republicans expressed concern that Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate had needlessly made Medicare a central issue in the campaign.

“The popularity of Congress, top to bottom, is not extremely high,” said Brad Dayspring, a senior adviser to the Young Guns Action Fund, a super PAC founded by former aides to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. “That being said, a lot depends on what happens in the individual races. Individual members of Congress, especially a lot of our freshmen, remain popular at home. Additionally, the Republican majority becomes a lot more important to people when it serves as a check and a balance.”

The brand problem could be more serious in statewide races for Senate or governorships – or on the national, presidential level. But some conservatives are betting their enthusiasm and general disappointment in Obama’s performance after four years might be enough to deliver the election.

“The Republican brand is not fully restored to its pre-2000 level. But this election isn’t going to be won by the Republican brand, it’s going to be won by what I call the ‘Allied Forces’ – the Tea Partiers, the establishment and everybody working toward a common goal,” said Al Cardenas, the chairman of the American Conservative Union.

“You don’t need the Republican Party to be at full strength, but what you need is all of those forces to be working together,” Cardenas added.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called on Rep. Todd Akin (R) to end his bid for Senate in Missouri.

"As I said yesterday, Todd Akin's comments were offensive and wrong and he should very seriously consider what course would be in the best interest of our country," Romney said in a statement. "Today, his fellow Missourians urged him to step aside, and I think he should accept their counsel and exit the Senate race."

Akin could end his campaign without much difficulty before 5 p.m. CST on Tuesday; if he were to press forward with his candidacy, he could still withdraw by Sept. 25, but would have to ask a court to remove his name from the ballot, and would have to pay the costs associated with reprinting ballots. In either case, the Missouri GOP would pick a new candidate.

The six-term congressman has weathered growing clamor to end his candidacy since saying this weekend that "legitimate rape" rarely leads to pregnancy. He is trying to unseat incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) this fall in a race critical to Republicans' hopes of retaking control of the Senate.

Updated 6:12 p.m. - Rep. Todd Akin (R) did not step aside as the Republican Senate nominee in Missouri, allowing a key preliminary deadline to end his candidacy to come and go.

Akin, who's faced growing clamor from fellow Republicans to end his candidacy amid an uproar over his weekend comments about rape, said he believes it is important for him to press forward with his campaign against incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

"I want to make one thing absolutely clear: we are going to continue with this race," Akin said on the radio show of Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Senate candidate.

"I've had a chance now to run through a primary. And the party people said that when you run through a primary, we'll be with you."

Akin had until 5 p.m. CST today to resign his Senate nomination without facing any procedural difficulties. He could still withdraw by Sept. 25, though he would have to petition a court to remove his name from the ballot, and have to pay costs associated with reprinting the ballots.

National Republicans have undertaken efforts to force the six-term congressman from the race. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has canceled its advertising reservations, and a pro-Republican super PAC has said it no longer plans to invest in the campaign, either. Top Republican senators have also canceled a planned fundraiser for Akin on Sept. 19.

Akin said he'd seen an influx of small-dollar donations since the initial uproar emerged on Sunday, and he said he'd received supportive calls from other colleagues in Congress, though he did not say who.

More significantly, national Republicans have begun openly agitating for Akin's ouster. Missouri's past five Republican senators released a joint statement today saying "the right decision is to step aside."

Orlin Wagner / AP

Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., talks with reporters while attending the Governor's Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, Mo.

Akin's controversy stems from comments he made last weekend on "The Jaco Report" on KTVI FOX 2 News, on which he said "legitimate rape" rarely results in pregnancy in victims. Akin has since apologized, and said he was mistaken to assert that rape culdn't result in pregnancy. He released a television ad to that effect this morning.

Republicans had high hopes of beating McCaskill before Akin made his comments over the weekend. But the congressman's persistence in the race could jeopardize the GOP's chances in this key race, which provides one of their best opportunities to achieve the net gain of four seats Republicans need this fall to take control of the Senate in the next Congress.

President Barack Obama deflected Republican criticism of his campaign's negativity, challenging general election opponent Mitt Romney: "You can't just make stuff up."

In an impromptu press conference at the White House, the president said his own campaign's television and radio advertisements against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee never crossed the line.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama speaks in the White House briefing room in Washington Aug. 20.

"If you look at the overall trajectory of the campaign and the ads that I have approved and that are produced by my campaign, you'll see that we point out sharp differences between the candidates, but we don't go out of bounds," Obama said.

Some of the sharpest instances of negativity during the 2012 campaign -- Vice President Joe Biden's comment before a mixed-race audience that Republicans and Wall Street would "put y'all back in chains" -- prompted Romney to condemn Obama for running a "campaign of division and anger and hate."

Campaigning with running mate Paul Ryan on Monday in New Hampshire, Romney accused the Obama campaign of lying by saying his tax plan would result in higher taxes.

"It seems that the first victim of an Obama campaign is the truth, and it has been sad and disappointing," Romney said.

The Obama campaign's assertion was based on a nonpartisan tax group's analysis that middle class families would effectively face a higher tax burden if Romney eliminated many popular deductions as part of his comprehensive tax reform.

The former Massachusetts governor's grievances don't end there, either. The Romney campaign was particularly incensed by an ad produced by Priorities USA, a pro-Obama super PAC, which suggests a man's wife died from cancer because he lost his insurance after was laid off from his job at a company owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Romney.

"I don't think that Gov. Romney is somehow responsible for the death of the woman that was portrayed in that ad. But keep in mind: this is an ad that I didn't approve, I did not produce, and, as far as I can tell, has barely run -- I think it ran once," Obama said.

But the president also challenged Romney's own advertising on welfare, which assert that Obama had "gutted" the centerpiece of the 1995 welfare reform law, which tied benefits to seeking work.

"You've got Gov. Romney creating as a centerpiece of his campaign this notion that we're taking [the] work requirement out of welfare, which every single person here who's looked at it says is patently false," Obama said. "They can run the campaign that they want, but the truth of the matter is, you can't just make stuff up."

The president's comments Monday come as POLITICO published a new e-book describing internal tension in the Obama campaign regarding the trajectory of the re-election campaign, and how the sharper edges of Obama's 2012 effort square with the more optimistic banner of "hope and change" in 2008.

Republicans have sought to make an issue of disillusionment with Obama's shift; the Republican National Committee produced an ad last week accusing the president of running a campaign of "anger and division."

But the president said he was satisfied with the manner of his campaign.

"I feel very comfortable with the fact that, when you look at the campaign we're running, we are focused on the issues and differences that matter to middle class families all across America," Obama said. "And that's exactly the kind of debate the American people deserve."

Updated 8:55 p.m. — A Republican Senate nominee found himself in hot water on Sunday for suggesting that instances of "legitimate rape" rarely results in pregnancy. 

Rep. Todd Akin, a Republican who's locked in a hard-fought campaign in Missouri to unseat Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, was answering a question regarding his position on abortion rights in instances when a woman is a victim of rape. 

"People always want to make it into one of those things — well, how do you slice this particularly tough ethical question," Akin said in an interview on KTVI-TV, video of which was circulated by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge. 

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," Akin said. 

Regarding his opinion on whether to allow for an abortion in such instances, Akin added: “But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

Akin's comments had an almost immediate impact on Missouri's Senate race. McCaskill wrote on Twitter:

In a statement, Akin said that he had misspoken. 

"In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it's clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year," he said.

Akin emerged earlier this month from a tough three-way primary in Missouri, where he rallied social conservatives behind his candidacy. Democrats actually spent during that primary to help Akin win, viewing the six-term congressman as a less formidable challenger in the general election. 

McCaskill, who was first elected in 2006, has become a top target for Republicans this fall, given President Barack Obama's unpopularity in the state and successive statewide victories for the GOP. 

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's campaign issued a statement disagreeing with Akin. 

"Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape," said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

Republicans need a net gain of four seats this fall in order to take over the Senate in the next Congress, and Democrats must defend 23 seats this fall. But unexpected Republican retirements and races that have become more competitive than expected have boosted Democratic hopes of maintaining their majority. 

Updated 1:24 p.m. - August has seen the presidential contest devolve into a protracted type of trench warfare between Democratic incumbent Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, as each campaign trades countervailing – and increasingly negative – blows with the other.

The high-minded aspirations associated with Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s addition to the Republican ticket have all but vanished in the handful of days since Romney named him as running mate. Daily sniping and low blows have now pervaded the 2012 campaign.

Evan Vucci / AP

Mitt Romney arrives at his headquarters, Friday, Aug. 17, 2012, in Boston.

“If the other guy's throwing punches, you've got to throw punches right back,” said Craig T. Smith, a former White House political director for Bill Clinton, who likened the millions spent on ads by both campaigns to a Cold War arms race.

A Republican official familiar with the party’s general election strategy offered a similar assessment: “If we weren't throwing punch for punch, then the story would be whether we're up for the task.”

The past week alone has seen the president of the United States joke about an instance in which Romney strapped the family dog to the roof of his car during a road trip. And Vice President Joe Biden told a mixed-race audience that Republicans, along with Wall Street, would “put y’all back in chains.”

Romney responded by accusing the president of “division and attack and hatred.” The presumptive Republican nominee’s allies at the Republican National Committee released a video taking the president to task for abandoning the mantle of hope-and-change on which he ran in 2008.

Moreover, the two campaigns have tangled lately over Romney's charge that Obama has gutted welfare's work requirement, and a pro-Obama super PAC's ad essentially tying Romney to a woman's death from cancer. And this morning, each campaign's manager traded open letters as stagecraft, demanding that Romney release more tax returns.

Summertime during presidential campaigns doesn’t have a particularly proud tradition of being constructive, but this year’s negativity nonetheless reflects some emerging political realities.

“Neither side is going to say that out loud, but the idea is to keep independent-minded people from turning out because they're just so disgusted about the process,” said David Mark, the editor of the website Politix, who wrote a book on the purpose and effectiveness of negative campaigning. “Both sides seemed to reach a conclusion that there aren't that many more independent voters, so they're focused on turning out their base.”

That helps explain why Romney’s selection of Ryan has done little to shift the polls or the arc of the campaign. The pick was directed more toward exciting conservatives than it was about winning over independents.

It did add a new element to the campaign, though, by putting the most controversial elements of the Wisconsin congressman's budgets – particularly the Medicare reforms – into the center of the election. But even still, discussion of the imperiled entitlement program this past week has focused more on each campaign attacking the other's position than offering up any affirmative solution.

Republican pollster Whit Ayres disagrees that the election will become one in which each side must focus on turning out its own supporters; the perception that the race is competitive, and that the stakes are high, will drive these prized voters to the polls.

But, he argued, enthusiasm is on the Republicans’ side, and that was only bolstered by Romney’s selection of Ryan.

“It didn’t take a stunningly insightful person and look at Mitt Romney standing in front of the USS Wisconsin and seeing he was relaxed and more confident,” Ayres said of last weekend’s introductory event. “Those are intangibles that can be important in an election this close.”

Mark McKinnon, a former strategist to President George W. Bush, argued that turnout would go down as a result of the negativity, which “could hurt Obama more.”

But Democrats argue that Republicans’ more aggressive engagement may well come too late, given all the efforts by the Obama campaign to define their opponent.

“They should have had this posture in May. Now they're trying to unring a bell,” said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons.

But they’re also excited that Ryan’s joining of the Republican ticket has added Medicare, an issue on which Democrats traditionally enjoy an advantage, to the national campaign.

“The Republican argument that the Democratic president is trying to harm Medicare would be like Democrats arguing that a Republican president is trying to harm the military,” said Simmons. “To be able to convince people of that, you have to be wielding a pretty convincing dagger.”

Past Augusts have not been kind to Obama, who saw his popularity flirt with record lows during the debt ceiling debate last summer, and during the vocal 2009 protests against his health care reform proposals.

August is also a month that has seen candidates like John McCain and John Kerry struggle to hit their stride. To that end, Romney has weathered months of tough criticism this summer, most of which was driven by the Obama campaign.

Neither Obama nor Romney have any interest in suffering the dog days of summer, and have sought to seize control of the month's news cycle. And that's why both have fought intensely — and more negatively — in recent weeks.

“We're in the part of the campaign where we need to make sure we're getting the reality out there,” said the Republican official. “From our perspective, we're pointing out the tactics the president has been using. “

The goal, for both sides, may be to simply survive. This thinking dictates that if a candidate can make it to their convention without suffering critical blows, they will be in position to reposture themselves before the heat of the fall campaign.

But, said Smith, “At the rate they're going, the question is how many swing voters are left at the end. “

Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and his newly-named running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, have made clear that they are doing more than defending their proposed changes to Medicare.

They’re welcoming the debate.

"President Obama is actually damaging Medicare for current seniors. It's irrefutable," Ryan told Fox News in an interview set to air this evening. "And that's why I think this is a debate we want to have, and that's a debate we're going to win."

That's a charge echoed in a new television ad released Tuesday by the Romney campaign, which charges the president with cutting $716 billion from Medicare at the expense of current retirees. (These cuts, which were enacted through health care reform, are largely used to pay for the costs of the new health reform law.)

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign rally at American Energy Corportation on August 14 in Beallsville, Ohio.

The Romney campaign's newfound eagerness to engage President Obama on Medicare appears to draw more from Republicans' 2010 playbook than anything else.

But the strategy raises the question: Can it work -- again -- after Republicans passed the Ryan budget plan in 2011 and 2012?

The Romney campaign has gambled that it will.

"You see, when he ran for office he said he’d protect Medicare, but did you know that he has taken $716 billion out of the Medicare trust fund – he’s raided that trust fund – and you know what he did with it? He’s used it to pay for Obamacare – a risky, unproven, federal government takeover of health care," Romney said Tuesday in Ohio. "And if I’m president of the United States we’re putting the $716 billion back."

Going on offense against Obama -- even with a strategy that is now two years old -- might prove to be the best way for Romney to defray the inevitable attacks he invited by adding Ryan, the GOP budget guru, to the ticket.

But arguably the most significant shift in the debate over entitlements during the last two years came in the form of two budgets authored by Ryan in his capacity as chairman of the House Budget Committee. Those proposals call for major changes to Medicare, principally by transforming it into a voucher (or "premium support") program for future retirees who are currently under the age of 55.

"The truth is that the Romney-Ryan budget would end Medicare as we know it: people with Medicare would be left with nothing but a voucher in place of the guaranteed benefits they rely on today," said Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith. "And they do it all to pay for massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires – the very same top-down economic scheme that crashed our economy and devastated the middle class in the first place."

Clouding the matter, though, is Romney's apparent disavowal of elements of Ryan's own plan, despite having previously said that he would sign the Ryan budget into law if it were the plan Congress were to send him.

For instance, Ryan's budget proposals leave in place the $716 billion of cuts to Medicare that Romney has vowed to restore.

The presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign has made clear since Saturday, when Romney formally named Ryan as his running mate, that the two budgets authored by Ryan during his time at the budget committee don’t fully represent Romney’s views.

The candidate himself made that much clear on Monday, when he told reporters in Florida that his own plan for Medicare is “very similar” to Ryan’s, though not exactly the same.

“We haven’t gone through piece by piece and said, ‘Oh, here’s a place where there’s a difference,’” he said, explaining that he couldn’t immediately recall an area of explicit difference.

Romney's website saysthat his plan "almost precisely mirrors" a proposal put forward by Ryan and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, which would move forward with a premium support plan, but allow future retirees to maintain existing Medicare benefits as an alternative option, but in competition with private plans and with premium levels meant to cover its costs.

But Romney and Ryan, so far, haven't emphasized this alternative, relying instead upon criticizing Obama's own cuts to Medicare.

NBC's Alex Moe contributed

The Senate is likely to assume an even more conservative tenor come January as a crop of insurgent-minded Republicans replace some of the GOP's old guard in the upper chamber.

A transformation within the Republican Party that was first set in motion during the 2010 midterm elections appears set to continue in the Senate, following in the path blazed in the House during this term of Congress.

“The goal is not only getting the Republican majority, but getting a conservative majority -- a majority of the Republican majority,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the director of state and federal campaigns for FreedomWorks, a group that’s worked to elect Tea Party candidates the last two cycles. “In a lot of ways, we're just getting started.”

While the Senate could flip to Republican control as a product of this fall's election, the chamber is even more likely to lurch rightward thanks to the ideological profile of its incoming measures.

The Senate’s more than likely to count conservatives like Texas’ Ted Cruz – the former state solicitor general who beat the establishment-backed Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Lone Star State's Senate primary on Tuesday – among its members come next January.

Cruz would replace retiring Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a relative moderate who’s spent 19 years in the Senate.

“Change happens faster in the House because you change over every two years,” said Grover Norquist, the president of the fiscally conservative Americans for Tax Reform. “From a Reagan perspective, it just takes longer for the Senate to shift than in the House. “

Joining Cruz could be two other Republicans who may very well be elected this fall: Nebraska's Deb Fischer and Indiana's Richard Mourdock, who both beat establishment-backed candidates in their primaries earlier this year.

In the case of Mourdock, he beat veteran Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar in a Republican primary by emphasizing Lugar's loosening ties to Indiana as much as the need for greater conservative fealty.

"To me, the highlight of politics, frankly, is to inflict my opinion on someone else from the microphone or in front of a camera, to win them over to my point of view," Mourdock described his approach to politics on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" after winning his primary. "If I am fortunate enough to become a United States senator, we're going to be involved with the national argument…”

Additional primaries that haven't yet been held could put more conservative insurgents in a position to take seats in the Senate.

“Part of what you're getting is an argument for electing guys who will go in and bust up the furniture and push hard,” Norquist said. “I think that means behavior modification for sitting senators on the Republican side, who will go, 'You mean that can happen to me?'”

Businessman John Brunner is battling against Rep. Todd Akin and former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman for the Republican Senate nomination in Missouri. The winner will face off against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, who trailed each of her potential Republican opponents in a Mason-Dixon poll released over the weekend.

Or take, for example, the three-way primary fight in Wisconsin, where newcomer Eric Hovde and former Rep. Mark Neumann are locked in a competitive challenge to former three-term Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Even upstart conservative challenger Will Cardon has made the Arizona Senate primary unpleasant for Rep. Jeff Flake, who's long been celebrated on the right for his commitment to fiscal conservatism and has the backing of FreedomWorks and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among other heavyweights.

In essence, the Senate Republican Conference could be refashioned as a more conservative version of its current self, a transformation that stalled in 2010 after some of the less polished conservative primary victors – like Nevada’s Sharron Angle, Colorado’s Ken Buck or Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell – fizzled in their general election campaigns.

Still, Republicans sent enough conservative darlings – Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, among others – to Washington in 2010 who could combine with insurgent-minded Republicans still yet to be elected this fall. Their numbers growing, these GOP senators are poised to add a harder edge to the GOP’s conservatism in the Senate.

Jim Manley, a former longtime aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., suggested that these Republican newcomers could make the Senate even more unwieldy to manage.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington July 31 following a political strategy session.

Republicans are optimistic that they’ll win control of the Senate in this fall’s election, which could propel Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., into the role of majority leader. But McConnell would soon encounter dueling obligations: the conservatives in his party demanding ideological purity and the need to assemble the 60 votes necessary – probably by winning over Democrats – to pass most anything in the Senate.

“I am very impressed with Ted Cruz and will do everything I can to help elect him in November,” McConnell said through a spokesman about the new face of the Senate GOP. “I look forward to working with anyone who is committed to reversing the Obama administration’s irresponsible spending, over-regulation and assaults on individual liberty, and I expect the Republican conference will be strongly united in all these efforts next year.”

“His caucus which is dominated by hardline conservatives could become even increasingly so after the elections in November. That means a somewhat unmanageable Senate GOP caucus could become even more so,” Manley said. “We all saw how difficult Speaker Boehner found dealing with those Tea Party types.”

It’s likely that these tensions would quickly come to loggerheads, too, given the pressing issues lawmakers will have to tackle almost immediately after the new Congress convenes in January.

Barring some deal either before the election or in the lame-duck Congress – both unlikely propositions – the new Congress will have to reckon quickly with the effects of automatic cuts to defense spending and automatic tax rate increases set to take place on Jan. 1.

Taken together, these complicated and intertwined elements of the so-called “fiscal cliff” practically demand the kind of concessions and compromises that lawmakers have found so elusive for the past year and a half.

“Leaving aside the lame duck, we can agree that under that scenario the kickoff to the new Congress could be very ugly, given all the pressing demands the new Congress may be forced to address,” Manley said. “It would make an already unprecedented situation that much more difficult.”

If that would seem to invite cooler heads to prevail, don’t expect groups like FreedomWorks to drop their quest to change the face of the Republican Party in Congress.

“We're going to make big inroads this year, but we're looking ahead,” Steinhauser said. “In 2014 we're already thinking about Lindsey Graham being replaced in South Carolina and Lamar Alexander in Tennessee.”

Mitt Romney is betting on having already survived the worst personal scrutiny the Obama campaign has had to offer, leaving him with enough leftover political clout to wage an offensive this fall that would manage to unseat the president.

With 98 days until the election, the Romney campaign believes the dog days of summer are essentially behind them. The campaign views controversies involving his tax returns and work at Bain Capital as having a short shelf life, and the presumptive Republican nominee’s work to capitalize on the president’s “you didn’t build that” gaffe have effectively changed the subject. Romney’s foreign trip had also been built up as an opportunity to pivot away from July’s struggles, though momentum from the trip was more mixed due to stumbles on each of its three legs.

“Our whole goal was to just hold our own over the summer,” said Bay Buchanan, an outside adviser to the Romney campaign. “We've done the warm-up, and we're coming into the convention with a much better position than anticipated.”

But Democrats assert that the Republican shouldn’t be so quick to assume that the attacks based on Romney’s career and personal wealth will disappear.

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The first few weeks of July saw an unrelenting and coordinated offensive against Romney, led by the Obama campaign and a variety of Democratic groups. The former Massachusetts governor weathered weeks of ads accusing his private equity firm of having moved jobs overseas during Romney’s time in charge. To make matters worse, Romney had been somewhat opaque about the exact time of his departure from Bain Capital, and had also refused to release additional years of tax returns – leaving him vulnerable to speculation about what those hidden records contained.

The Romney campaign’s steadfastness in the face of scrutiny prompted semi-public handwringing among GOP poobahs, who wondered whether the GOP candidate was essentially allowing the president to define him.

Obama’s comments at a campaign stop in Roanoke, in which he seemed to suggest that business owners don’t deserve all the credit for their successes, handed the Romney campaign a chance to reverse momentum. Republicans have been hitting it hard since then, and the president even released an ad personally responding to the attack.

“You don't always want your candidate out there responding to everything they're saying,” said Buchanan. “We want him, Barack Obama, responding to us.”

Combined with anemic jobs numbers at the beginning of the month and a somewhat lackluster GDP report last week, Republicans believe their narrative on the economy is hardening and Romney remains strong enough to subsume Obama this fall.

This all sets the stage for a pivotal month of August, in which Romney must introduce himself to voters and begin turning the tide against Obama.

It just might be the case that July’s squabbles, though, will set the parameters for the fall debate.

“It’s wishful thinking on the part of the Romney to think it's behind them. They might survive it, but it's not behind them,” said former Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, a Democrat known for his strategic acumen.

Frost said that if he were Romney, he wouldn’t release additional tax returns beyond what’s already been pledged – for fear that there were years in which the former Bain leader paid little to no taxes.

“The Romney people are whistling in the dark if they think the Bain thing will go away,” Frost added.

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Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean was starker.

“This is going to be the issue that brings him down,” he said, arguing that the attacks on Bain and Romney’s taxes cut to the core of questions about Romney’s character and trustworthiness.

Dean argued that even Romney’s best message on the economy won’t sink in with voters unless they’re willing to put faith in the former Massachusetts governor as Obama’s alternative.

“He could have turned this into something really good. But as long as he’s got his tax returns hidden, it’s going to be fatal,” Dean said, referencing in particular the Republican assault on Obama’s “You didn’t build that” comments. “What Romney is doing is negating his advantage on the economy by not seeming trustworthy.”

But Romney’s team is almost zenlike in its singular focus on the economy. Though much of the past week was dominated by the Republican’s foreign policy tour – for both its embarrassing moments and triumphs – attention will soon turn back to the economy. This Friday’s report on job creation during July could give Romney a cudgel to use against Obama, and the impending selection of a Republican vice presidential candidate and next month’s Republican convention would allow the GOP to drive the campaign narrative into September.

“Once we turn that corner where we can get past the explanations about Bain – and I think we have – then it's a winning campaign,” said Buchanan, who said that the drumbeat for Romney to offer more specific policy alternatives to Obama were “secondary” to convincing voters that his vision on the economy is superior to Obama’s.

“We're going to hit the economy, stay on message the full extent we can. But we're not running in a vacuum. The other guy's going to be going after us personally,” she said. “You get your surrogates to respond to the personal stuff. They've hit us pretty hard, I don't know where else they're going to come.”

That might be music to the ears of the president’s team and most Democrats if their strategy on making the election into a choice – and disqualifying Romney in the process – is to be believed.

“I’ll say one thing about Obama, whatever my differences with him. He’s run the best campaign I’ve ever seen a Democrat run in my lifetime,” Dean said.

“Romney’s tried to keep this thing on the economy since March and he hasn’t succeeded. What makes you think he’s going to succeed the next three months?” he added.