Ezra Klein points out that if President Obama wins re-election, he will likely “still be negotiating with Republican leaders in Congress. But the same can’t be said for Mitt Romney.”

“If Romney wins the election, it’s almost a sure bet that Republicans win control of both the House and the Senate. And that matters. Right now, the GOP’s agenda is the Ryan budget, and that’s entirely fiscal: It’s a premium support plan for Medicare, and tax cuts, and deep cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other domestic programs. All that can be passed through budget reconciliation — which is to say, all that can be made immune to the filibuster.”

“So if Romney wins and the Republicans take control, they could accomplish quite a lot on party-line votes, even if their majorities are slim, and Democrats are opposed. Indeed, Romney could end up being a fairly transformational president for conservatives so long as he’s paired with a Republican Congress.”

Mitt Romney’s big speech tonight as primary results come in is billed as his “pivot” to the general election campaign.

A quick search by BuzzFeed finds this is his 97th pivot since voting in Iowa began in January.

A new Pew Research study finds negative coverage of President Obama outweighed his positive coverage in each of the last 15 weeks — the only presidential candidate where that was true.

“While a sitting president may have access to the ‘bully pulpit,’ that does not mean he has control of the media narrative, particularly during the other party’s primary season.”

The Gallup daily tracking poll, which kicked off eight days ago with Mitt Romney leading by two points, now has President Obama in front by 7 points, 49% to 42%.

Meanwhile, a new DailyKos/SEIU poll shows Obama leading Romney 49% to 44%.

Walter Shapiro writes about his “political-journalistic courtship” of John Edwards “that now makes me cringe.”

“With Edwards on trial in North Carolina on charges of violating federal campaign-finance laws — after the disgrace of being caught with a mistress and denying being the father of her baby — I wish I had befriended a comparatively more honorable political figure like Eliot Spitzer or Mark Sanford… In hindsight, I feel like the jaded city slicker, bristling with self-confidence that he can never be fooled, who ends up hoodwinked by the smiling rural Southern confidence man.”

“I’m not sure what that is because I’m not serving right now.”

— Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Sarah Steelman (R), quoted by the Springfield News-Leader, when asked for her position on reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

Despite ripping his own party over the weekend, Jon Huntsman told CNBC that he’s still firmly behind Mitt Romney for president.

Said Huntsman: “Absolutely, I am. Listen, the economic message is going to carry the day in November, and I think that message will resonate — or not — through the critically important states in the Midwest… These are gonna be the states that will tell the story in November. I think it’s about recovery, it’s about rebuilding our manufacturing muscle in this country, and the prospects for job creation. I think he’s best positioned by virtue of his own background training to be able to provide that leadership.”

That said, Jeff Greenfield is convinced Huntsman will leave the Republican party.

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Ezra Klein worked with three political scientists to create a model to forecast the 2012 presidential. You predict how the economy will do, and where President Obama’s approval rating will be in 2012, and the model spits out the winner.

The inputs “may seem a bit thin. But it calls 12 of the past 16 elections right. The average error in its prediction of the two-party vote share is less than three percentage points.”

RNC spokeswoman Alexandra Franceschi told The Fernando Espuelas Show that the Republican party’s economic platform in 2012 is going to be the same as it was during the Bush years, “just updated.”

[Read more…]

First Read: “Even though the general election campaign is now underway — after Rick Santorum’s exit earlier this month — there are five primaries today in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania (Santorum’s home state), and Rhode Island. As a result, this is the first primary day where Romney doesn’t face any real competition. So when we watch the returns, we’ll get a good idea of the true anti-Romney vote tonight. Does he get at least 50% in all of these contests? What about 60%? 70%?”

“There are a bunch of fools running, literally. These are not even C-team people. It’s the D team. They’re silly people.”

— Democratic media consultant Neil Oxman, quoted by The Atlantic, on the Republican U.S. Senate candidates running in today’s Pennsylvania primary.

First Read: “This GOP field should be a warning sign to Republicans who want to make
this state competitive in November: They couldn’t find a top-tier or
even second-tier challenger to take on Casey in this battleground state.”

A new NY1/Marist College poll finds New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D) breaking away from the Democratic pack of mayoral candidates.

Quinn leads with 32%, a full 20 points ahead of her nearest rival, former City Comptroller Bill Thompson (D).

Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to convince police commissioner Ray Kelly to run.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is tried to convince New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to support Mitt Romney’s bid for president in a meeting yesterday, the New York Post reports.

Said McCain: “I just came in to pay my respects to the mayor. He and I are old friends from many years back. I told him that I just spent last weekend with Romney and I thought that Romney was on message . . . and tried to convince the mayor that we’ve got a winning campaign.”

Maggie Haberman: “Bloomberg, having decided against a run himself, could end up making his voice heard with an endorsement, and he’s made clear privately to many people he doesn’t think highly of the job President Obama has done.”