Updated 10:50 a.m. ET: On NBC’s Meet the Press, National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre on Sunday refused to support new gun control legislation and maintained his support for putting armed guards and police in schools in response to the Dec. 14 school shootings in Newtown, Conn.

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“If it’s crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” LaPierre told NBC’s David Gregory. “I think the American people think it’s crazy not to do it. It’s the one thing that would keep people safe and the NRA is going try to do that.”

He added that the United States is now spending $2 billion to train police officers in Iraq and asked why federal funds could not be spent to train school guards to protect schools in the United States.

Asked about restricting the size of ammunition magazine or clips, LaPierre said, “I don’t believe that’s going to make one difference. There are so many different ways to evade that, even if you had that. You had that for 10 years when (Sen.) Dianne Feinstein passed that ban in ’94. It was on the books. Columbine occurred right in the middle of it – it didn’t make any difference.”

Feinstein, D-Calif., was the author of the 1994 ban on certain types of semiautomatic firearms which expired in 2004. She has announced that she will introduce new legislation early next year. Semiautomatic firearms, including semiautomatic weapons sometimes called “assault weapons,” fire one round per pull of the trigger.

“I know there’s a media machine in this country that wants to blame guns every time something happens,” LaPierre said, but he insisted that an armed guard might have been able to stop Adam Lanza, the killer in Connecticut.

“If I’m a mom or a dad and I’m dropping my child off at school I’d feel a whole lot safer” if there were trained armed security guards or police protecting the school from people such as Lanza, LaPierre said, although he conceded that “nothing is perfect” as a deterrent against crime.

LaPierre also said, “We have a mental health system in this country that has completely and totally collapsed. We have no national database of these lunatics” and complained that de-institutionalization of the mentally ill had put too many dangerous people on the streets of America. “We have a completely cracked mentally ill system that’s got these monsters walking the streets,” LaPierre said.

And he said many states do not put their records of those adjudicated to be mentally ill into the national instant check system that is designed to screen out convicted criminals and the mentally ill from buying guns.

The NRA CEO also argued that the federal government had invested far too little effort into enforcing the longstanding federal law that makes it illegal for convicted felons to possess guns. The federal effort to enforce existing restrictions on gun possession, he said, is “pitiful.”

He said, “If you want to control violent criminals, take them off the street.”

But he firmly opposed curbs on private gun sales and contended that the advocates of stringent restrictions on such sales want to put “every gun sale under the thumb of the federal government.”

LaPierre called Feinstein’s bill “a phony piece of legislation” which he predicted would not become law.

President Barack Obama has tasked Vice President Joe Biden with the job of consulting with members of the Cabinet and outside organizations to come up with legislative proposals by next month.

When asked about this initiative, LaPierre said, “if it’s a panel that’s just going to be made up of a bunch of people that for the past 20 years has been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I’m not interested in sitting on that panel…. The NRA is not going to let people lose the Second Amendment in this country.”

Following LaPierre on Meet the Press, Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N.Y., said that the NRA leader is “so extreme and so tone deaf that he actually helps the cause of us passing sensible gun legislation in the Congress…. He is so doctrinaire and so adamant that I believe gun owners turn against him as well.”

Schumer said that LaPierre believes “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is good gun with a gun. What about trying to stop the bad guy from getting the gun in the first place? That’s common sense. Most Americans agree with it.”

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., said killers such as Lanza were “non-traditional criminals… people who are not wired right for some reason. And I don’t know if there’s anything Lindsey Graham can do in the Senate to stop mass murder from somebody that’s hell bent on doing crazy things” -- apart from better security in schools. The South Carolina Republican also called for getting “mass murders off the streets before they act, by better mental health detection.”

Graham said that while he was out Christmas shopping in South Carolina this weekend, people “have come up to me (and said) ‘Please don’t let the government take my guns away.’ And I’m going to stand against the assault (weapons) ban because it didn’t work before and it won’t work in the future.”

LaPierre’s appearance on Meet the Press followed the strong reaction over his defiant stand during a Friday press briefing about the NRA’s response to the Connecticut school shootings.

Amid a national debate over what security measures school administrators should take to ensure the safety of students, gun-control advocates reacted with disbelief Friday to LaPierre’s call for armed guards in every school and his blaming of Hollywood films, video games, and popular music for school shootings such as the one in Connecticut.

How firmly the NRA’s allies in Congress will oppose any new legislative initiatives from Obama, Feinstein or others remains an open question.

In a test of the NRA’s legislative influence, the House of Representatives late last year passed the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, which has not yet been acted on by the Senate.

In the House vote, 229 Republicans and 43 Democrats voted for the NRA-backed bill.

The House bill allows a person with a photo identification card and a valid permit to carry a concealed firearm in one state to carry a concealed handgun in another state in accordance with the restrictions of that second state.

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Charles Krupa / AP

A campaign worker removes candidate signs from in front of Mitt Romney's campaign office in Manchester, N.H., Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012.

As Republicans nurse their wounds from last week's election setbacks, they’re trying to learn the right lessons from defeat, studying outcomes in various House and Senate races, and pondering how best to position themselves when it comes to the politics of immigration.

Mitt Romney’s poor performance among Latino voters in states like Nevada and Colorado helped undermine his chances of victory in those battlegrounds. As a result, some Republicans are drawing the lesson that their party must find a message and a candidate to ensure they do not end up, as Romney did in Nevada, winning only about one-in-four Latino voters.

Romney lost that state by 66,000 votes, or 6.6 percentage points.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, the co-founder of a group called "Resurgent Republic."

“Until Republican candidates figure out how to perform better among non-white voters, especially Hispanics and Asians, Republican presidential contenders will have an extraordinarily difficult time winning presidential elections from this point forward,” he said.

Warning of a demographic apocalypse for the GOP was Texas Senator-elect Ted Cruz who told The New Yorker, “If Republicans do not do better in the Hispanic community, in a few short years Republicans will no longer be the majority party in our state.”

And since New York and California supply such a huge and utterly dependable source of electoral votes for the Democrats, if Texas joined them in going Democratic in presidential races, which hasn't happened since 1976, then, Cruz said, “The Republican Party would cease to exist.”

But in Nevada, Republican incumbent Dean Heller won his Senate race even as Romney was losing the state – and among Latino voters, Heller won just about what Romney won: about one quarter of them.

However, there were significant differences between the Senate race and the presidential race in Nevada: one was the weakness of Democratic candidate Rep. Shelley Berkley among black voters who accounted for nearly one out of ten voters in in Nevada.

While President Barack Obama carried 92 percent of black voters, Berkley won only seven out of ten. Berkley also under-performed among women voters, getting 48 percent to Obama’s 57 percent, according to exit poll interviews.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Latinos and immigrants participate in a rally on immigration reform in front of the White House on Nov. 8, 2012 in Washington, D.C.

And among the three-fifths of the Nevada electorate who believe that most illegal immigrants working in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for legal status, Berkley lagged Obama’s performance by ten points, according to exit polls.

Nevada also has a “none of these candidates” line on the ballot and that option drew 4.5 percent of the voters in that Senate race but only 0.6 percent of those who voted in the presidential contest in Nevada.

In July, the House Ethics Committee announced that it was opening an investigation into whether Berkley had violated the "Code of Official Conduct" or any law by her alleged intervention on behalf of businesses in which her husband had a financial interest. That fact may explain why Berkley lagged Obama.

Independent American Party candidate David Lory VanDerBeek, a small government conservative, also won nearly 5 percent of the Nevada vote, but if anything, his votes came from Heller and not from Berkley.

Now as the Senate looks toward the legislative agenda for 2013, newly elected Republican senators such as Cruz and Senator-elect Jeff Flake of Arizona, as well as returning GOP senators such as Heller, must decide whether to support the Democrats’ Dream Act which would give legal status to young non-citizens brought to the United States illegally by their parents.

Flake told NPR last week that Republicans “need to deal with this issue in ways different than we've approached it in the past ... We need to deal with the very real problem presented by the Dreamers – those who are here through no fault of their own. I think the Republicans can get out front on that issue and offer a long-term solution, not just the short-term solution that's been put forward by the president.”

But an accommodating policy toward legalizing illegal immigrants would raise strategic questions for Republicans: last Tuesday in Nevada, Arizona, and other states, Latino voters supported Obama and other Democratic candidates by a ratio of nearly three-to-one.

If adding millions of younger Latino residents to the legal resident population (and eventually to the citizen voting population) means adding millions more Democrats, then how is that a winning strategy for Republicans?

Tony Dejak / AP

A man walks out of the Ohio headquarters of Mitt Romney campaign office carrying a "Nobama 2012 sign," Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012, in Columbus, Ohio.

“Who’s to say they’re going to be Democrats then?” Ayres asked, referring to the potential pool of younger immigrants who might eventually gain citizenship if Congress enacts some version of the Dream Act. “They don’t want a handout or a guarantee, they want an opportunity. They’d like to keep more of what they earn; they’d like the opportunity to start businesses and an opportunity to start a family. A great many of those people have the work ethic and the entrepreneurial spirit and the family orientation to be good solid Republicans – if we stop the tone that suggests we don’t want them as part of our coalition.”

The last time the Dream Act was put to a vote, in 2010, only three Republican senators and only eight House Republicans voted for it. If Republicans who voted against the Dream Act just two years ago now reverse or trim their positions on immigration, is every vote GOP candidates might gain among Latino voters offset by a vote they’ll lose among those who oppose giving legal status to illegal immigrants?

Again Ayres has an answer to this. Referring to GOP voters who today oppose the Dream Act, he asked, “Who’s to say they’re single-issue voters? And who’s to say they aren’t capable of being persuaded by the likes of Marco Rubio?”

Rubio is the Republican senator from Florida, and a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, who has proposed his own version of a legalization program for younger illegal immigrants, but one that is less lenient and expansive than the version Democrats offered in 2010.

One other puzzle Republicans will need to solve if they are to win more elections in 2014 and beyond is how to make smaller government appealing to more voters, or in other words, how to offer voters less in the way of tangible benefits.

But the reason that Republicans were successful in exploiting the Medicare issue during the 2010 midterms is not because they were making a smaller government/fewer benefits argument.

Instead, they were arguing that Obamacare would take away older Americans’ Medicare benefits, since the Affordable Care Act intends to squeeze hundreds of billions of dollars in more savings out of Medicare, partly to help pay for an expansion of Medicaid for poor people.

By a narrow majority in the national exit poll sample, and by a wider majority in states such as Arizona, voters last week agreed with the idea that “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” That indicates that perhaps Romney’s message got through to voters on the failed federally subsidized energy firms such as Solyndra and A123 Systems.

In the short term, Flake, for one, is taking a wait-and-see approach toward Obamacare, the most visible symbol of bigger government.

He thinks that parts of it will self-destruct. “There are parts of Obamacare that I think will probably fall of their own weight,” Flake told NPR.

Outright repeal isn’t in the cards, but Flake argued that once people see how expensive Obamacare mandates are for his state and others – and once people see employers refusing to hire more than 50 people for fear they’d have to comply with Obamacare mandates, then voters might see that “the Republican way will be the way to deal with it.”

Ron Edmonds / AP

President Ronald Reagan, left, and Democratic candidate Walter Mondale shake hands at the start of the second round of the 1984 Presidential debate in Kansas City, Mo., on Sunday, Oct. 21, 1984.

“We can’t afford another four years like the last four years,” Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tells viewers in his new TV ad. And Wednesday’s debate may be Romney’s best opportunity to get Americans to agree with that claim.

More than 52 million people will be watching, if next week’s prime-time audience matches the viewership of the first debate four years ago between Barack Obama and John McCain.

If even one percent of viewers change their minds (and their votes), that number of people – let’s say 525,000 voters altogether – could be enough to nudge the election in competitive states like Colorado and Ohio.

Romney goes into the debate trailing Obama in both national polling and polls in battlegrounds such as Ohio.

A Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll in Ohio released Wednesday showed Romney 10 points behind Obama among likely voters. Even as feeble as the economy is – with a record high number of long-term unemployed Americans since the Labor Depart began keeping statistics in 1948 – that survey showed voters evenly divided on whether they’re better off or worse off than they were four years ago.

If Obama is on a trajectory to victory, as recent polls seem to indicate, then, like Bill Clinton when he ran for re-election in 1996, it’s in the incumbent’s interest to have the debates be anti-climactic.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP/Getty Images

Republican challanger Bob Dole and President Bill Clinton shake hands after their first debate on Oct. 6, 1996 in Hartford, Conn.

“We didn’t want them (the voters) to pay attention,” Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos explained at a Harvard Institute of Politics conference of campaign managers and pollsters a month Clinton defeated Republican Bob Dole in 1996. “The (Clinton-Dole) debates were a metaphor for the campaign. We wanted the debates to be a non-event.”

Conversely Dole’s advisers wanted their candidate to goad Clinton into an angry outburst. “We thought that if we could push the button enough times and Clinton responded to Dole, it would have created an issue that didn’t exist (before),” said Dole’s pollster Tony Fabrizio. 

Tad Devine, an adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in 2004 when he, like Romney this year and Dole in 1996, was trying to oust an incumbent president, George W. Bush, said “our goal was to get back in the race” when Kerry went into that first debate on Sept. 30, 2004, eight points behind Bush in the Gallup poll.

Kerry tried to do that by “being appropriately aggressive against the president” and “to challenge him in the area which was allegedly his area of expertise … to go in and show the president as someone who was out of touch with the course of events in Iraq and around the world,” Devine said. “That’s why, for example, John was able to challenge the president for confusing Osama bin Laden with Saddam Hussein and point out to him they were not the same guy.”

Kevork Djansezian / AP

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., shakes hands with President George W. Bush after the third and final presidential debate in Tempe, Ariz., Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2004.

By Oct. 3, 2004, Gallup showed the race tied. “That movement in the polling can be attributed in large measure to Kerry’s performance in the first debate,” Devine said.

But Bush regained his lead by the middle of October. At the end of final debate, on Oct. 13, 2004, Kerry went off-message with a remark about the sexual orientation of Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Mary.

But Devine said, “It became particularly clear afterwards that that election was defined not so much by what was happening in the country in 2004, but by what happened to the country on Sept. 11, 2001. The Sept. 11 attacks were the overhang of that campaign, they defined the campaign and when that bin Laden video turned up the Friday before the election, I think that more than any single event probably determined the outcome of the election.”

Devine said in the first debate on Wednesday Romney has to “re-set the race and make up enormous ground. If Mitt Romney cannot get a second look from voters in this debate, then he’s going to have a real hard time keeping his own party together. That’s the great threat he faces right now.”

As you’d expect, there’s a parallel effort on the Republican side to play down both the significance of the debate and Romney’s skill as a debater.

In an interview Tuesday with NBC’s Garrett Haake, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who has been playing Obama in Romney’s debate practice sessions, said the Democratic incumbent has “been through a lot of those one-on-one debates with a Republican. Mitt has not. When you think about it, he hasn't had a real debate in ten years (when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002).” 

For the record, Romney turned in a strong performance in his last general election debate with a Democratic opponent, his Oct. 29, 2002 showdown with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Shannon O’Brien, coming across as relaxed, specific, and forceful.

But there may be a tendency to overstate the impact of debates because we tend to fixate on “telling” moments that stick in our minds.

The model is Vice President Richard Nixon’s disastrous first encounter with Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy in 1960. Almost everything went wrong for Nixon, including his decision to go without professional makeup despite his five-o’clock shadow and his weight loss caused by illness. Nixon was “glowering and occasionally haggard-looking to the point of sickness,” said journalist Theodore H. White in The Making of the President 1960.

According to the moderator of that first debate, Howard K. Smith, Nixon knew when he showed up that night that “he should not have agreed to debate. He was downcast. He knew it was a mistake.”

But careful study of polling data doesn’t bear out the expectation that debates will be campaign-altering events.

Political scientist John Sides at George Washington University writes that “When it comes to shifting enough votes to decide the outcome of the election, presidential debates have rarely, if ever, mattered.”

He cites research by political scientist James Stimson and others that finds no presidential debate from 1960 to 2000 caused a substantial shift in voter sentiment.

“At best, debates provide a ‘nudge’ in very close elections like 1960, 1980, or 2000,” Sides said.

In 1980, for example, Ronald Reagan had a very slight lead in polls going into his one debate with President Jimmy Carter and came out of the debate with a slightly bigger, but still small lead in polling. “The debate seemed to matter, but it mainly nudged Reagan even further toward victory,” Sides said.

A record 80.6 million people watched that Carter-Reagan standoff.

The decisive factor may have been the Reagan team’s insistence on trying to include third-party candidate John Anderson in the debates, which Carter refused to agree to – and then delaying an agreement with the Carter team until late in the campaign. Only one debate took place – just a week before Election Day.

Carter’s hyperbolic warnings about Reagan’s “extremely dangerous and belligerent” approach toward nuclear weapons didn’t seem to persuade voters – perhaps because Carter’s words didn’t match Reagan’s affable and calm appearance on the TV screen.

In his White House diary, Carter cites not only the debate but “massive slippage” in his support in the polls in the campaign’s final weeks “as people realized the hostages (held by Iran) were not coming home." As political scientist Sides notes, “debates aren’t the only thing that voters are hearing and seeing in the weeks before the election.”

Despite the lack of evidence of debates having a decisive effect on elections, the possibility of extemporaneous brilliance or blundering is always there. 

Debates often prompt their own debates over what might have been – for example, what if Reagan had not recovered from his sometimes halting performance in his first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984.

“Reagan struggled today to regain his campaign stride after a debate that his strategists acknowledged probably boosted the political fortunes of Walter F. Mondale,” The Washington Post reported two days after the men’s first debate. “One adviser … conceded that Reagan may have appeared tired and showed his 73 years during the closing stretch of the 100-minute debate, which ran 10 minutes over schedule.”

The Miami Herald reported that “his occasionally stumbling performance … including groping for words, malapropisms and an awkward silence during one answer late in the debate in which he seemed to lose his train of thought” had raised the age issue.

Reagan was still much further ahead of Mondale after that first debate than Obama is ahead of Romney today. Reagan’s 1984 pollster Richard Wirthlin told the Washington Post that “the president's 18-percentage-point lead could slip to 12 or 13 points by week's end” after the first debate.

Reagan saved the day in the return bout. With a straight face, the Hollywood veteran recited the joke that most people recall: “I will not make age an issue … I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.”

Debate revisionism, the tendency to rewrite history to conform to a story line, sometimes muddles history.

The odd incident which most people recall from the Reagan-Mondale debates – an episode that reminded people of Reagan’s advanced age – was his meandering recollection, “I remember driving down the California coast one day … .”

But that “senior moment” came at the very end of the second of the two debates with Mondale – after Regan had already defused concerns about his age with his joke earlier in the debate.

The early returns are in, and the winner as the Democratic convention's most ubiquitous and energetic politician so far is Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker. Seemingly everywhere you look, Booker is addressing a state delegation, speaking at a rally, or greeting his fans.

On Tuesday night as a summer storm boomed in Charlotte, Booker won thunderous applause as he addressed the convention on the platform.

"When your country is in a costly war with our soldiers sacrificing abroad, and our nation is facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare, it's patriotism," he said, arguing the need for tax increases.

John Brecher / NBC News

Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, addresses the Florida delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday morning.

But the mayor’s appearance on the dais was just his highest-profile one in a series of stops this convention week. On Tuesday morning, Booker brought the Florida delegation to its feet with a rousing speech.

“We can’t make the mistake that they (the Republicans) make of thinking this country is hungry for bash and slash and trash,” he said. “This country is hungry for hope.”

He got a huge laugh with his joke about New Jersey being superior to Virginia – despite the slogan, “Virginia is for lovers.” He said, “In New Jersey we invented the drive-in movie theater,” adding that his mother told him, “You were conceived in a double feature. Sidney Poitier, ‘In the Heat of the Night’ – and ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’”

Recommended: LA mayor: Obama 'being humble' in giving self 'incomplete' grade

Tuesday afternoon, Booker was the leadoff speaker at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund rally at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in downtown Charlotte. “He ran into a burning building to save a woman’s life,” actress and emcee Aisha Tyler said as she introduced Booker – a reference to his actions to save a neighbor from a fire earlier this year.

Booker told the crowd he’d made a mistake last week thinking he could do his usual late-night routine of simultaneously watching television and eating ice cream. While watching the Republican convention, he said he found that “Ben & Jerry does not mix with Mitt and Ryan ... that ice cream was curdling before I even got it to my mouth.”

He bashed New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie – although not identifying him by name – for proposing a 2010 budget that cut funding for Planned Parenthood, resulting in the reduction of clinic hours.

“They may tell us they love women, but when they do things like that, they are setting all of us back,” he said. When a woman goes to a Planned Parenthood clinic, Booker said, “This is an opportunity for them to get contraception that could prevent the abortion that you are so much against.”

On Monday, Booker was up early to address the Iowa delegation where he got a wildly enthusiastic reception during his 25-minute speech and told that his grandmother was born in Des Moines, Iowa.

"My grandma back in 1918 was born in Des Moines, Iowa ... My grandmother grew up there, my grandmother's siblings went to college there. My family is still spread out all through Iowa ... I'm proud, proud of those roots," he said.

Booker told the delegates that great-grandparents moved from Alabama to Buxton, Iowa which in the early 1900s was a big coal mining town with a large African-American population. Booker’s mention of Buxton got a big round of applause. "Some people know what I'm talking about!" he said.

John Brecher / NBC News

Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, addresses the Florida delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday morning.

Related: Iowa Democrats prepare for starring role in fall campaign

It’s not clear where Booker’s relentless energy will lead the mayor electorally. Two possible opportunities await back in his home state: to run for senator if Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., decides to retire in 2014, or to run for governor next year against Christie.

“I think even he may not know yet,” said David Redlawsk, director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll and professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “He's ambitious, but ambition in New Jersey usually runs up against various power brokers. I don't think he'd want to take on Lautenberg in a primary, so the Senate depends on what the current senator decides to do. He has, of course, insisted he will be running again.”

Redlawsk added, “Governor is also tricky, given that Christie's ratings have held up, and that right now you'd have to say he has the inside track for a second term. A loss to Christie would certainly be painful. The Senate seat is far more likely to stay in Democratic hands than Christie is to lose at this point. Thus, if Booker could somehow clear the decks for a Senate run, and Lautenberg retired, that would give him the highest probability of success.”

No matter how high he is able to climb in New Jersey politics, Booker is tirelessly building a national following here in Charlotte – and on Thursday he'll be addressing the New Hampshire delegation's breakfast. 

TAMPA, Fla. -- As Republicans prepared to welcome their presidential nominee to Thursday’s final session of the GOP convention in Tampa, Mitt Romney's friends and allies took on the job of persuading Americans that he's a man more worthy of their trust and their vote than President Barack Obama.

David Goldman / AP

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Republican vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan walk in for a group picture with their campaign staff at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Thursday.

A stream of character witnesses came before the delegates to testify that Romney was a man of compassion and integrity who’d devoted much of his life to helping others, both as a business executive and as a Mormon leader.

Mormon Pam Finlayson recalled how Romney cared for her family when her daughter Kate was born prematurely, suffered a severe brain hemorrhage, and was close to death.

When Romney came to visit Finlayson and her daughter in the hospital, “I could tell immediately that he didn't just see a tangle of plastic and tubes and wires; he saw our beautiful little girl, and he was clearly overcome with compassion for her.”

Although her daughter survived, she became gravely ill at age 26 and died. “In the midst of making the final decision to run for president ... when they heard of Kate's passing, both Mitt and Ann paused, to personally reach out to extend us sympathy, and express their love.”

She said, “It seems to me when it comes to loving our neighbor, we can talk about it, or we can live it. The Romneys live it every single day.”

Mormon Grant Bennett, who served as an assistant pastor under Romney said, “Mitt prayed with and counseled church members seeking spiritual direction, single mothers raising children, couples with marital problems, youth with addictions, immigrants separated from their families, and individuals whose heat had been shut off.”

He said, “Mitt did what he challenged us to do. He led by example.”

Bob White, one of Romney’s partners at Bain Capital, said “Our investors included pension funds, colleges and charities with noble missions. We would invest wisely and treat their money as carefully as our own.”

He added, “And when things went wrong, we would not blame others. Finally, he took decisive action. Mitt never hesitated. He made the tough decisions, coalesced the team, and moved forward.”

The testimonials to Romney’s character were delivered against a backdrop of polling data that show a likeability gap between Romney and Obama.

In the most recent NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, 58 percent of respondents said Obama was the more “easygoing and likable” candidate, while only 23 percent said the same of Romney. Fifty two percent saw Obama as caring more about average people, while only 30 percent saw Romney in that light.

Emphasis on Florida
But the testimony Thursday night to Romney’s admirable qualities will be in vain if he doesn't win Florida’s 29 electoral votes.

Under most electoral vote scenarios, Florida is a must-win state for Romney. So it wasn’t surprising that Thursday’s featured speakers included Floridians: Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Rep. Connie Mack, who is the GOP Senate candidate.

Rubio, who introduced Romney, said Obama was promoting big government ideas. "Ideas that people come to America to get away from" and "threaten to make America more like the rest of the world, instead of helping the world become more like America," Rubio said.

Earlier, Jeb Bush delivered a short tribute to his brother, former president George W. Bush. “He kept us safe,” he said, drawing huge cheers from the delegates.

Then addressing Obama, Bush said, “Mr. President, it is time to stop blaming your predecessor for your failed economic policies. You were dealt a tough hand but your policies have not worked. In the fourth year of your presidency, a real leader would accept responsibility for his actions and you haven’t done it.”

Bush then devoted much of his speech to public education reform, giving parents the choice of which schools they children should attend.

“I know it’s hard to take on the unions. They fund campaigns. They’re well-organized,” he said , and on Election Day, union members show up. “Meanwhile, the kids aren’t old enough to vote. But you and I know who deserves a choice. Gov. Romney knows it, too.”

Slideshow: Republican National Convention

Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images

Republicans gather in Tampa, Florida to officially nominate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, as the party's candidates for the 2012 presidential election.

Launch slideshow

Mladen Antonov / AFP - Getty Images

Mitt Romney talks to a technician during a sound check session at the Tampa Bay Times Forum on Thursday ahead of his speech at the Republican National Convention.

TAMPA, Fla. -- For a candidate seeking to unseat an incumbent commander in chief, there are few opportunities more important than that first nationally televised speech as a presidential nominee; a unique opportunity to speak not just to the core of the party, but to voters all across the country. 

When Mitt Romney delivers his acceptance speech Thursday night in Tampa, he’ll be following the footsteps of previous presidential challengers, who either inspired or alienated voters with their convention addresses.

For the many Americans who pay only occasional attention to the presidential campaign, Romney will have the chance to demonstrate who he is, what he believes, and where he hopes to lead the nation.

Previous candidates who, like Romney, were trying to defeat an incumbent have delivered acceptance speeches which fall into several types; some of which Romney will surely avoid.

Unapologetic and defiant
When Sen. Barry Goldwater, R- Ariz., won the Republican nomination in 1964, he refused to camouflage or retreat from his conservative beliefs. His speech to the convention in San Francisco was perhaps the most uncompromising in American political history.

Check out a 360 degree, panoramic image of the RNC

A grim-looking Goldwater told the crowd, “The good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free, not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of communism.”

For Republican moderates who were alarmed by Goldwater’s threats of using nuclear weapons and his musings about ending Social Security, he had a message: go elsewhere. “Those who do not care for our cause, we don't expect to enter our ranks in any case,” he said.

The convention had been roiled by a party platform fight over condemning the John Birch Society and other groups called “extremist” by the media. Goldwater took on the controversy directly with his famous lines: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Romney's RNC speech: A chance to reshape campaign arc

None of this helped Goldwater in his uphill battle against President Lyndon Johnson, but in all likelihood Goldwater was going to lose the election anyway. Goldwater’s speech did at least provide one model of how to go down to defeat in the most defiant way.

Although not quite as hard-edged as Goldwater’s speech, 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole’s acceptance speech also had a stern tone. Dole denounced officials in President Bill Clinton’s administration as "a corps of elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned ... ."

He promised to be the nation’s toughest cop: "If I win, the lives of violent criminals are going to be hell,” he vowed to pursue terrorists “to the ends of the earth" and he said, “We should not have here a single illegal immigrant … .”

Candid, sincere, populist ... and ill-timed
In 1984, by the time Democratic challenger Walter Mondale spoke to his party’s convention in San Francisco, the signs were clear that the economy had recovered from its worst recession since World War II and that incumbent President Ronald Reagan would be hard to beat.

Mondale -- the leader of a party that had never made fiscal austerity its central creed -- chose to offer himself as a truth teller and fiscal hawk, pledging to reduce the budget deficit by two-thirds.

“Here's the truth about the future: We are living on borrowed money and borrowed time,” he warned. “These deficits hike interest rates, clobber exports, stunt investment, kill jobs, undermine growth, cheat our kids, and shrink our future.”

He predicted that “Whoever is inaugurated in January,” the tax burden would go up. “Anyone who says they won't is not telling the truth to the American people.” He added, “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did.”

Mondale also mixed in a dose of typical Democratic populism of the kind still heard today: “To the corporations and the freeloaders who play the loopholes and pay no taxes, my message is: Your free ride is over.”

Watch Wednesday night's RNC speeches here

This did not prove to be an inspiring message to the voters: Mondale lost every state but his own, Minnesota.

Also falling into the category of candid, sincere, and populist -- but even worse timed -- was the 1972 speech of Democratic candidate George McGovern.

Bad convention management and fractious delegates meant that McGovern did not get to deliver his speech until 2:45 a.m. ET -- unthinkable, even suicidal, by today’s TV standards.

Slideshow: Republican National Convention

Evan Vucci / AP

Republicans gather in Tampa, Florida to officially nominate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, as the party's candidates for the 2012 presidential election.

Launch slideshow

For those who couldn’t stay awake, Chalmers Roberts of The Washington Post summed it up: “A rousing speech, delivered with fervor as well as verve.” To Democrats angry about President Richard Nixon continuing the war in Vietnam, McGovern pledged, “I will halt the senseless bombing of Indochina on Inauguration Day.” He never got the chance, going down in a landslide defeat that November.

Populist and homey
In New York in 1992, Bill Clinton delivered his acceptance speech just hours after Ross Perot said he was withdrawing from the presidential race, a decision Perot later reversed. Clinton appealed to Perot voters to join the Democrats and then uncorked a smoothly delivered populist appeal with themes much like those of Mondale in 1984.

"I was raised to believe that the American Dream was built on rewarding hard work," he said. "But folks in Washington have turned that American ethic on its head. For too long, those who play by the rules and keep the faith have gotten the shaft. And those who cut corners and cut deals have been rewarded."

Clinton said of his opponent George H.W. Bush, "He raised taxes on the people who drive pick-up trucks and lowered taxes on people who ride in limousines."

He concluded with a personal touch about the Arkansas town where he grew up -- and the line most people today remember: "I end tonight where it all began for me," he said. "I still believe in a place called Hope."

The gesture, more than the words
You may not remember many of the phrases in 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry’s convention speech, but you probably do recall how he began that speech -- coming out, saluting to the crowd, and declaring, “I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty.”

The theme of Kerry’s campaign against President George W. Bush was that Kerry’s national security credentials were impeccable because he’d served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. As a combat veteran he would cede nothing to Bush on patriotism.

“As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war,” he said, as he pledged to “bring our allies to our side and share the burden” and “reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.”

Not memorable but no matter …
Then there are those acceptance speeches which in the end aren’t that memorable -- but don’t matter because the challenger scores his rhetorical victory in a fall debate.

Reagan’s acceptance speech at the 1980 GOP convention isn’t remembered today as one of his greatest. It did what you’d expect -- it challenged the incumbent president Jimmy Carter and his record.

He asked, ''Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter administration took office with where we are today and say, 'Keep up the good work?' Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, 'Let's have four more years of this?' ''

More decisive was the side-by-side comparison of the self-assured Reagan with his dour opponent in the sole debate the two men had one week before the election.

Updated at 8:30pm ET TAMPA, Fla. — Tropical Storm Isaac has forced Gulf State governors to delay or possibly abandon their trips to the Republican convention. 

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal have said that, at a minimum, they will be delaying their trips to Tampa. 

On Sunday Jindal issued a statement noting that a hurricane watch is in effect for the New Orleans metro area and the parishes adjacent to Lake Pontchartrain. He urged the people in that area to ensure that they had an evacuation plan in place, as well plenty of water, non-perishable food items, and other essentials they may need.

Earlier Sunday, Kyle Plotkin, Jindal's communications director, told NBC News that the governor would not leave people in his state in "peril."
"The Governor was slated to speak at the convention in 2008 when (Hurricane) Gustav hit, he not only didn’t speak, he didn’t even go.  He will certainly not leave the state if our people are in peril," Plotkin said in an email.

Apart from the Gulf State governors, the prominent Republicans who won’t be in Tampa are primarily party leaders of the past, as well as one failed GOP presidential hopeful, and a few GOP Senate contenders.

Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, have both decided to not attend the convention, but former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is scheduled to be there and has been given a featured speaking spot on Wednesday night.

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National conventions are partly designed to honor those who have brought the party victory in the past. Ronald Reagan gave seven GOP convention addresses, the first of them as an unsuccessful presidential contender in 1968, asking the delegates to make Richard Nixon’s nomination unanimous, and the last of them his farewell at 1992 event in Houston, one of the most poignant convention performances of the television era.

In that 1992 farewell, Reagan reminded delegates of the creed that still defines Republicans today: “We believe that no power of government is as formidable a force for good as the creativity and entrepreneurial drive of the American people.”

But not all ex-presidents are equal in terms of their stature after leaving office.

When Reagan left office, 63 percent of Americans approved of his performance as president. But when George W. Bush left office in 2009, his Gallup approval rating was only 34 percent. So it’s hardly surprising that Bush won’t be at the Tampa convention. Former Vice President Dick Cheney will also not be attending.

The 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will be another Tampa non-attendee, but the man who chose her to be his running mate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, is also slated to be speaking at the convention on Wednesday night.

Another Tampa absentee will be former ambassador to China and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, whose bid for the Republican nomination found little support among primary voters.

At least four GOP Senate candidates will be skipping the convention: Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri – whom party leaders are pressuring to exit the race after his inflammatory rape comments -- New Mexico’s Heather Wilson, Virginia’s George Allen and Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg. All four are in what are likely to be competitive races, although Akin’s future as a candidate remains uncertain.

Another Republican Senate candidate in a competitive race, Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, will be spending one day at the Tampa convention.

NBC's Jamie Novogrod contributed reporting.

The finances of state governments are improving, but states face deep uncertainty in the coming fiscal year as they grapple with the new costs of Medicaid expansion and the long-term costs of state employee pensions.

According to a survey of state fiscal officials released Tuesday by the National Conference of State Legislatures, state revenue has begun to return to pre-recession levels. Thirty states ended their fiscal year with combined balances and rainy day funds of 5 percent or more of their general fund spending.

But the report notes that “the robust return of state revenue collections that typified previous recoveries remains elusive.”

States’ general fund revenue increased in fiscal year 2012 by nearly 3 percent over the prior year, while spending increased by roughly the same amount.

Fiscal officials’ estimate for FY 2013 is that state revenues will go up by 3.7 percent from FY 2012, while they forecast that spending will go up by 2.4 percent.

In most states, the fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following calendar year.

Asked to identify the biggest challenges they will face in the coming fiscal year, officials from 22 states indicated that the expansion of the Medicaid program mandated by the Affordable Care Act or other health care costs will be their most difficult problem.

Energy producing states Wyoming and Oklahoma cited low or declining prices for natural gas, coal, and oil as big challenges, while North Dakota said the energy boom in the state is causing a need for increased state spending on infrastructure.

Missouri, Pennsylvania and Montana all cited state employee pensions as the major fiscal challenge in the year ahead, while Alabama and California both cited ballot initiatives on taxing and budgeting as the biggest fiscal tests.

In Alabama, a September ballot measure would transfer $146 million from the oil and gas trust fund into the general fund. If voters reject that ballot measure, the governor and state legislature will need to make budget cuts.

In California, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed a sales tax increase and an income tax increase on those earning more than $250,000 a year. The Brown proposal will be put to the voters on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Asked what they see as sources of fiscal strength in the year ahead, officials in most states said revenue growth coming from higher incomes and from increased tax collections. In Pennsylvania, for example, tax revenues are expected to grow at a rate of 3.4 percent, while in Tennessee tax collections have exceeded estimates for 22 consecutive months.

In 2010 and 2011 state governments were able to keep more employees on their payrolls than they otherwise would have due to an infusion of cash from the $830 billion federal stimulus. But that money has mostly run out and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of state employees -- which had risen from 4.9 million in 2004 to 5.2 million in 2008 -- had fallen to just above 5 million in July.  

Although the presidential campaign rhetoric in recent days has been dominated by “sending jobs overseas,” more than 5 million Americans do live and work overseas and some of them vote and contribute to candidates. Highlighting their importance, Mitt Romney will be appearing at fundraising events when he visits London and Jerusalem at the end of July.

Related: Romney planning to visit Israel over summer

As with candidate Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin during the 2008 campaign, Romney’s foreign tour is a reminder that Americans living abroad are no longer forgotten citizens in election years. They’re a source not only of votes, but of campaign funds: one of Romney’s London events is a dinner with a minimum contribution of $25,000 and his event in Jerusalem asks $50,000 per couple (unless you've raised $100,000 for the Republican's campaign).

Jae C. Hong / AP

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., waves as he arrives at the Victory Column in Berlin July 24, 2008.

Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinatat, president of the Overseas Vote Foundation said, “Too many Americans abroad still think they need to be maintaining a U.S. residence or mailing address to vote -- that is totally untrue. Some think their ballots aren't counted -- another myth!”

If it’s a close election this November, the outcome might come down to a few thousand votes in swing states such as Florida, Virginia and Ohio. And some of those last few thousand swing-state voters may be residing not in Miami, Charlottesville or Cincinnati, but in Tel Aviv, Shanghai and Berlin. The votes of Americans overseas are counted in the state in which they last resided: the Virginian residing in China has his or her vote counted in Virginia.

According to the federal Election Assistance Commission, in the 2008 election those three states had almost 150,000 overseas votes counted:

• 26,300 in Ohio
• 28,000 in Virginia
• 95,000 in Florida

Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition -- who just returned from a voter-mobilization trip to Israel with Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush -- said about 150,000 Americans living in Israel are eligible to vote.

“We wanted to go over there to help raise awareness of the critical issues facing Israel and facing the Jewish community in the 2012 election and encourage those folks who are eligible to register and to vote in November,” Brooks said.

“We believe this is going to be a very close election and if we’re able to mobilize a significant number of U.S. citizens living abroad who are eligible to vote, especially in the battleground states -- Florida was decided in 2000 by a little over 500 votes -- we’re going to leave no stone unturned,” Brooks said.

He contended that “President Obama has a problem with the Jewish vote and the Jewish community” partly due to his “failed policies” in the Middle East.

David Harris, the president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, the Democrats’ counterpart to the RJC, said, “We hope to travel there or get Democratic surrogates -- including elected officials -- to Israel,” to make the case for Obama to American voters there.

Of the RJC, Harris said, “We have a much easier sale than they do,” since Jewish voters have long preferred Democratic candidates by about a three-to-one ratio.

Another group working on facilitating voting by Americans living in Israel is iVoteIsrael, formed last year.

National Director Elie Pieprz said, “By creating a streamlined process, sort of a voting concierge, iVoteIsrael seeks to overcome the largest obstacle to voter participation,” which is overseas residents receiving their ballots too late from their state or county elections official in the United States, or sending them back too late for the vote to be counted.

“The goal of the campaign is to maximize the absentee vote from Israel,” Pieprz said. “We are not endorsing any candidate or party, and our message is targeted at both sides of the aisle.”

But the Federal Voting Assistance Program, the agency in charge of helping overseas Americans vote, recently stirred a furor by changing the form used to register to vote or request a ballot.

On the revised federal post card application, the would-be voter is asked to check whether they “intend” or “do not intend” to return to the United States.

Roland Crim, a spokesman on voting issues for American Citizens Abroad, said in a statement that if overseas Americans declared an intent not to return they would “risk having state election officials improperly disqualify their votes in federal elections.” He said, “The language of the new form acted as a form of voting repellent, particularly for voters uncertain as to what the future might portend.”

“No voter should be asked to check that box,” Dzieduszycka-Suinatat said, partly because state and local election officials might not send the ballot to the voter if they think he’s never coming back to the United States.

According to Defense Department Spokesperson Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde, the FVAP, which is part of the Defense Department, changed the language on the 2011 form "to assist voters in complying with voter eligibility laws in most states." She said 40 states and the District of Columbia have statutory language regarding the intent of an absent voter to return to the state or district.

Now on the FVAP website, both the older post card application -- which does not ask about intent to return to the United States -- and the 2011 revised form are available. Voters “can use either form depending on their needs and comfort level,” Hull-Ryde said.

Apart from that controversy, Dzieduszycka-Suinatat said voting for overseas Americans is often smooth since they can receive their ballots online. (Go to the Overseas Vote Foundation website.)

And she said, “FedEx teams with [the Overseas Vote Foundation] every election year to offer at-your-doorstep pick up for ballots to be sent back to U.S. election offices in a matter of a day or two at very reduced rates, special for U.S. voters overseas.”

She added that this year U.S. citizens residing abroad have another incentive to vote: their unhappiness with a 2010 law called Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which imposes fines for those who do not report information on their foreign bank accounts (if their aggregate value exceeds $50,000) to the Internal Revenue Service. The minimum penalty for failing to submit the information is $10,000; the maximum penalty is $50,000.

“It makes all kinds of sense to find people who are hiding money overseas to keep it from being taxed,” she said. “But what happened is that in their net, they ended up persecuting the average Joe who lives overseas.”

She said, “It’s almost as if the U.S. doesn’t appreciate the fact that we’re out here representing the country, building trade.” She said, “without representation, overseas Americans can be somewhat persecuted.”

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

The Supreme Court is seen on June 18, 2012. The high court is set to rule within days on the constitutionality of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

The Supreme Court of the United States – as much as campaign spending, the news media, and political ads on television – is a force shaping the 2012 presidential campaign.

That’s not only because the justices will soon decide the fate of both the Affordable Care Act and the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, but because the court’s docket for its term beginning in October has a number of contentious cases on it. Among them: the use of racial preferences in admissions to state universities, the ability of U.S. citizens to challenge the validity of the government’s use of electronic surveillance to detect terrorist threats, and whether federal law allows suits in U.S. courts over alleged human rights violations committed in foreign countries.

Other high-profile cases dealing with same-sex marriage, campaign finance, the Voting Rights Act, and an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote have a good chance of being added to the docket before October.

Election Day seems likely to serve as a referendum on the court itself, especially if the justices strike down all or parts of President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the health care overhaul.

Obama has signaled that if the justices struck down the law, he would make “judicial activism” a theme of his campaign. In his 2010 State of the Union address, he already complained about the court loosening campaign finance rules in its Citizens United decision.

And after the justices heard oral arguments in the health care litigation, Obama told reporters, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” He said conservatives had complained for years about “a lack of judicial restraint -- that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”

Obama would take up that conservative grievance and ask voters to give him a second term put his imprint on the court.

And that appointment power is what’s looming over voters’ choice of Obama versus Mitt Romney; the ability to select successors to Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy -- the three oldest justices on the court, all of whom are over the age of 75.

As is almost everyone else in Washington, several former Justice Department officials and law professors who spoke at a panel discussion Tuesday sponsored by the progressive-leaning American Constitution Society speculated on what the court might do in the landmark health care case, which could be announced as early as Thursday.

Paul Wolfson, who has argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court and clerked for Justice Byron White, said the provision in the ACA which expands Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people, is more significant than many observers have noticed.

“In terms of the progressive policy objective of making health care universally accessible and affordable to all Americans, the expansion of Medicaid is equally as important, if not more important” than the insurance purchase mandate that most commentators have focused on.

That provision expands the Medicaid-eligible population by one-third and imposes a uniform income eligibility standard in every state (135 percent of the federal poverty line) -- which means that middle-class people in poorer states will be covered. The states challenging that part of the ACA claim that they are being coerced into going along with the Medicaid expansion, even though most of the most is being borne by the federal taxpayers.

Washington attorney Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general during the Clinton administration and a supporter of the ACA, hazarded the guess that the justices will affirm the health care law.

“I’m wondering whether the court might possibly do something undramatic” and that would be to focus on the government’s argument that a person is complying with the law if he pays the penalty for not purchasing health insurance. Since the penalty (or tax) for not buying insurance is so small, Dellinger said, a majority of the justices might see it as not too much of an infringement on individual rights. “The penalty is OK, but the mandate isn’t” because it “would preserve the idea that you can’t be forced into a transaction” is how Dellinger summed up this possible ruling. That, he said would leave the law intact.

But another lawyer on the ACS panel, Patricia Millett, a former lawyer in the solicitor general’s office during the Clinton administration who has argued 31 cases before the high court, said it was clear from the justices’ questions during oral argument that the difficulty of removing one section of the law which the court found to be unconstitutional without damaging the rest was weighing on their minds: “Do we then create a Frankenstein of a statute that functions in a way that Congress would have never wanted?”

Looking to the new term that begins in October, Dellinger said it’s likely the court will address the constitutionality of Section 3 of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage in federal law as the union of one man and one woman. He said that provision of DOMA undermined the existing laws in a handful of states that do allow same-sex couples to marry -- because it deprives those couples of federal benefits, including those protected under the federal estate and gift tax exemption.

He was bullish on the court striking down Section 3 of DOMA: “The DOMA case is a very powerful case to go to the Supreme Court because states’ rights and gay rights are on the same side.”

Dellinger said it was “a troublesome fact” that the ideological alignment on the court was so often the five appointees of Republican presidents (Scalia, Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts) opposing the four justices appointed by Democratic presidents (Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan). “For the first time in my lifetime, we have an alignment of ideology and political party,” he said. Formerly there would be at least a few justices such as Byron White who, although being appointed by a Democratic president, turned out to be conservative on some issues, or like John Paul Stevens who although appointed by a Republican president turned out to be liberal on some issues.

But former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who argued both the Arizona immigration case and the ACA cases before the court, pointed out that in the current term of the court there have been several unanimous decisions such as in the Texas redistricting case, a religious freedom case, a search-and-seizure case including GPS devices, and a major environmental case on the Clean Water Act.

These were “tremendously important and consequential cases,” Clement said --  all were voted 9-0 by the justices.  

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, head of the largest bank in the United States, takes his seat on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 13, 2012, prior to testifying before the Senate Banking Committee about how his company recently lost more than $2 billion on risky trades.

With election season heating up, both Democrats and Republicans scored political messaging points in Wednesday morning’s Senate Banking Committee hearing with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.  The hearing explored the firm’s more than $2 billion loss in a London-based hedging strategy that went awry, setting up a sometimes contentious exchange between the lawmakers and the CEO.

The JP Morgan loss prompted fears in Congress that similar losses on a far bigger scale might spur calls for another taxpayer bailout of financial firms -- which would be both a political and fiscal nightmare.

Democrats made their case for more vigilant regulation of financial institutions. But Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who is up for re-election this November, also made the point that he doesn’t see Dimon as the enemy: “You have some 19,000 employees in the Columbus area who are also my constituents, so we have a mutual interest in your institution running safely and soundly.”

But those jobs might have been put at risk by the failed hedging strategy, Brown said. “I don’t want to see consumer lenders in Columbus losing their jobs because cowboys in London made too many risky bets.”

On their side, Republicans contended that the 2010 Dodd-Frank law wasn’t the solution and that even if fully implemented, it would not have prevented the JP Morgan loss.

Related: Dimon hearing a chance for those facing re-election to shine

Dimon himself accomplished the mission of appearing contrite, perhaps alleviating some of the congressional frustration over the botched hedging strategy. He admitted to “complacency” about the culpable JP Morgan trading unit and added the lesson of the episode was, “Never, ever get complacent in risk; challenge everything, make sure people on the risk committee are always asking questions.”

But Dimon also helped Republicans make their case that it isn’t clear that Dodd-Frank has not made the financial system any safer. “I don’t know,” he replied, when Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. asked him whether Dodd-Frank had made the system less dangerous.

And Dimon was unafraid to shove back a bit at panel members -- complaining at one point that those who wrote the Dodd-Frank law hadn’t brought him, and other financial sector CEOs, into a room in 2010 to discuss what elements ought to go into the law. “We never actually sat down, Republicans Democrats, businesses, and had a real detailed conversation about what went wrong (in 2008) and what needs to be fixed,” Dimon lamented.

And at a few points he hinted at a bit of contempt for Congress, as when Sen. Jerry Moran, R- Kan., asked him about his comment that arrogance and hubris were common in large financial institutions. “They can occur in small organizations too,” Dimon said.

“You aren’t talking about the Senate, surely?” joked Moran.

“Definitely not, not now,” Dimon replied.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R- S.C., told Dimon that Congress was in no position to criticize his firm’s balance sheet: “You appear to be in much better fiscal shape than we are as a country.” He added, “A lot of us are frustrated bank managers and want to manage your business for you … we’re not capable of doing that for what we’ve been given to manage.”

Perhaps the most provocative point was made by Brown who said the size and complexity of JP Morgan -- and regulators’ struggles to comprehend what the firm was doing “demonstrates to me that ‘too big to fail’ banks are frankly too big to manage and too big to regulate.”

Brown has offered a bill that would go beyond Dodd-Frank by imposing a 10 percent limit on any bank's share of the total amount of deposits of all insured banks in the United States and a 10 percent limit on the liabilities that any one financial company can take on, relative to the nation’s financial sector.

But another Democrat up for re-election this November, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, dissented from Brown on that point. “Is it (JP Morgan) too big? I don’t know,” Tester said in an interview after the hearing.  He pointed out that Dimon had testified that 100 regulators are at JP Morgan at any one time. “I can’t make a prediction whether they’re too big to manage. I think I had that same question quite frankly about (the now-bankrupt) MF Global whose crime was much more clear.”

If the question is whether Morgan is so big and politically powerful “that it needs to be broke up,” as Tester put it, “I’m not sure that it needs to happen.”

Tester used his five minutes of interrogation time to assail Dimon for JP Morgan’s tardiness in returning funds to farmers and ranchers from MF Global which were on deposit at his company.

But like DeMint, Tester seemed to acknowledge that perhaps senators are not fully equipped to understand all of what goes on in the world of complex financial institutions: “you guys know the industry better than anybody setting (sitting) up here.”

But Tester said after the hearing that in his state the really crucial issue is not under-regulation but over-regulation – of small community banks.

“We don’t have these big banks in Montana. What we’ve got is a ton of small banks and credit unions that really are the lifeblood for capital for small businesses,” he explained. “There is a real problem -- I think it’s getting better, but the jury is still out -- on how these community banks are being regulated. Part of it is our own problem: we brought the regulators in and beat the hell out of them during the financial meltdown because they didn’t do their job.”

But now “they’ve clamped down” and “if you clamp down too much on these banks, it’s going to stop the money from going out … .”

Tester said, “We need to make sure that the regulators apply common-sense regulation” but “not so much that it freezes up the financial markets and I think that’s  what’s happened in Montana and that’s the concern.”