Washington Post: “It happened more than a quarter century ago, at the start of a Romney family summer vacation. But the tale of Seamus, the Irish setter who got sick while riding 12 hours on the roof of Mitt Romney’s faux-wood-paneled station wagon, is ballooning into a narrative of epic proportions. It has come to characterize the candidate — and not in the favorable way Tagg Romney hoped for when he first talked in 2007 about his family’s annual road trips.”

“The idea that the Republicans have to be organized before Labor Day or they will be out of the race I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of television, the internet, you know YouTube, all the things we now communicate with. A very exciting Republican Party that actually talked about ideas and actually had a fight over the platform based on real ideas, I think might be a more interesting party than one which nominates somebody who’s boring for five months.”

— Newt Gingrich, in ABC News interview on January 13, 2008, advocating a brokered convention.

Ron Paul “has sent discreet signals to Camp Romney” suggesting he might be willing to trade his support in the GOP presidential race, Alex Altman reports.

“Aides say if Paul can’t win the nomination, four legislative priorities would top the Texas Representative’s wish list: deep spending cuts that lead to a balanced budget; the restoration of civil liberties; a commitment to reclaim the legislative branch’s right to declare war, which it abdicated to the executive branch in recent decades; and reforms that shore up the U.S. monetary system, such an audit of the Federal Reserve or competing-currency legislation.”

Paul might also be enticed “by the prospect of serving as a presidential adviser, a Cabinet position for someone in his orbit or ‘perhaps a vice presidency.’ Not for himself, but rather his son. Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky and a Tea Party icon, is expected to launch his own White House bid in 2016. Being on the ticket now – or even being mentioned for it – would be a helpful step.”

BuzzFeed: “Mitt Romney could have assured himself victory months in advance in the now-crucial primary state of Illinois, but instead his Illinois campaign operation chose to allow Rick Santorum’s delegates to remain on the ballot despite a failure to meet signature requirements.”

“The decision produced a quiet storm of outrage among Romney’s allies in the state, who were bewildered by the decision to make a slam-dunk race competitive, and to grant an opening in the desperate scramble to reach the 1,144 delegates required for the Republican nomination.”

A new Wilson Perkins Allen survey in Texas shows Rick Santorum leading the Republican presidential race with 35%, followed by Mitt Romney at 27%, Newt Gingrich at 20% and Ron Paul at 8%.

The Texas primary is on May 29, and it is the second-biggest delegate prize behind California.

A new Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania shows favorite son Rick Santorum with a big lead over his GOP presidential rivals at 36%, followed by Mitt Romney at 22%, Ron Paul at 12% and Newt Gingrich at 8%.

The Pennsylvania primary isn’t until April 24.

“I am not recommending prostitution to anyone, nor did I say I
engaged with prostitutes. I
took my wife. She was the only non-hooker on board.”

— Montana gubernatorial candidate Neil Livingstone (R), quoted by the AP, explaining one of the “spectacular list of exploits” included in his biography..

First Read: “What is his campaign about? He says he wants to ‘restore America’s greatness,’ but what does that mean? (Go back to the ’50s? The ’60s? The ’80s? The Bush years?) He says he’ll be able to turn around the economy, but what if it’s already slowly improving as the evidence currently suggests? And the campaign makes it clear that Romney is the inevitable nominee, but what happens if that inevitable nominee loses? Team Romney has had a message problem since this campaign began, and when you make your candidacy about electability and process, you’re going to pay a BIG price for losing to candidates. Why does Romney want to be president, an office he’s been running for the past six years? Has he really answered this basic question?”

A new Pew Research survey finds that 59% of American voters say that President Obama is likely to be re-elected if his opponent is Mitt Romney.

If the contest is between Obama and Rick Santorum, 68% anticipate an Obama victory.

President Obama took British Prime Minister David Cameron to a NCAA basketball game in Ohio yesterday and is rewarded with the front-page of the Dayton Daily News and this headline: “The heartland is what it’s all about.”

The full quote from a half time interview: “Sometimes when we have foreign visitors, they’re only visiting the
coasts. They go to New York,
they go to Washington, they go to Los Angeles, but the heartland is what
it’s all about.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to listen to a value judgment of a guy who strapped his own dog on the top of a car and went hurling down the highway.”

— Santorum advisor John Brabender, quoted by National Journal, hitting back at Mitt Romney for saying Santorum was “at the desperate end of his campaign.”

The Illinois primary is next Tuesday and after last night’s victories by Rick Santorum it’s shaping up to be a very important contest in the GOP presidential race.

First Read: “Once again, the pressure is on Romney. And once again, Team Romney has a HUGE advertising advantage, with the campaign and Super PAC spending nearly a combined $3 million so far (versus $16,000 for Gingrich and zero for Santorum). But the pressure is on Santorum, too. Can he defeat Romney in a state that isn’t dominated by conservatives and evangelicals? Can he pull off what he was unable to do in Michigan and Ohio? Romney hasn’t won an ‘away game,’ but neither has Santorum.”

“And the delegate match is NOT kind to Santorum in Illinois either. He didn’t file full delegate slates in the congressional districts; he’s 10 short. And Illinois is not an allocation system, it’s DIRECT ELECTION of the delegates INDIVIDUALLY in the congressional districts. A total nightmare, to be honest, for those tracking delegates. But it almost guarantees Romney will likely win a majority of the state’s delegates even if he loses the statewide vote, which has ZERO delegates connected to it.”