People have accused President Obama of flip-flopping on issues like gay marriage (his stance is "evolving") and keeping the prison at Guantanamo Bay open (he tried, but ran into opposition in Congress). But the really fundamental flop for him is on the individual mandate, the subject of tomorrow's oral arguments before the Supreme Court.

American Crossroads is out with a video highlighting that today, showing Barack Obama in his own words arguing with himself before the Supreme Court.

When Obama was running for president, he spent months campaigning against Hillary Clinton with the biggest distinction between them (besides Iraq) being the mandate. Clinton's team argued fiercely that the only way to cover everyone and control costs was with the mandate. Obama, however, likely realizing the general-election politics of requiring people to buy health insurance, disagreed and said it was possible to cover everyone without it.

Crossroads' tag line in the video is "Obama was right on the individual mandate...before he was wrong."

Of course, then by that standard, Mitt Romney is still wrong, because he defends the mandate for Massachusetts (though he now argues it is OK for states to make those decisions at a local level and not federally). And wrong, too, would be the Heritage Foundation, which first floated the idea of a mandate and became the conservative alternative to the plan then-First Lady Hillary Clinton put forward in the early 1990s.

“Mitt Romney remains his biggest foe, but Rick Santorum is increasingly confronting an even more daunting obstacle: a rising chorus of Republicans calling for the divisive presidential contest to end so the party can turn its full attention to defeating President Obama,” the New York Times says.

ROMNEY: Today, the AFL-CIO is calling for the resignation of a current National Labor Relations Board member in a matter involving an adviser to Romney. Per a press release, “The report of the Inspector General of the National Labor Relations Board into allegations of improper conduct by NLRB member Terence Flynn confirms a pattern of ethical violations that are nothing less than shocking. The report details numerous instances of then-chief counsel Flynn funneling confidential information about the labor board’s activities and deliberations, including attorney-client privileged information, to two former NLRB members who have been actively engaged in a relentless campaign to undermine and discredit the NLRB through legal and rhetorical challenges to the agency’s activities. One of the former NLRB members who received confidential information – former Chairman Peter Schaumber – is co-chair of the labor policy advisory group for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. 

SANTORUM: National Journal wonders if the real end to Santorum’s campaign would come in Pennsylvania, losing his home state to Romney.

The DCCC has a new web video -- which features actor Martin Sheen -- that’s entitled “Stand Up for Medicare.”

It was a tough week for Rick Santorum, suggesting that it would be better to elect Barack Obama than an "Etch-A-Sketch" Republican like Mitt Romney and then walking it back.

Now he's out with an over-the-top apocalyptic web video in the vein of every zombie movie ever made, depicting a stark world with vacant streets, boarded up buildings, and empty children's swings -- all caused by a president's "failed policies" particularly toward Iran.

The video even flashes an image of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and President Obama.

Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley called it "absurd" to think the campaign is comparing President Obama with the Iranian leader.

But that's not the only eyebrow raising aspect of this ad, titled "ObamaVille." It is supposed to take place in a "small American town two years from now if Obama is re-elected." At one point, a man is pressing a gas nozzle against his head. At another point an imagine of a man in an orange jump suit is quickly followed by one of a baby in a crib.

"If Ahmadinejad gets a nuclear weapon, then we're obviously going to deal with the fallout and coverage of that," Gidley said defending the ad. "All we're going to be seeing is images of him and the president. We were trying to illustrate that."

He said it is the first in a series of ObamaVille ads. It's the work of senior strategist John Brabender.

Charlie Cook on the state of the GOP race: “Simply put, no plausible arithmetic gets Santorum or Gingrich to 1,144 delegates that doesn’t involve Romney getting hit by a bus.”

ROMNEY: National Journal: “No Exit: The Supreme Court challenge to ‘Obamacare’ puts a spotlight on Mitt Romney and the Massachusetts health plan his party despises. Awkward.”

The Hill: Specter says he may vote for Romney 

Sen. Jim DeMint seemed to re-embrace him yesterday.

WASHINGTON: Roll Call reports: “Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is heading back to Washington state next month, stoking speculation he might be considering a comeback bid on the West Coast.

Kucinich will address a forum on protecting Social Security at Highline Community College on April 12, according to the group Washington Citizens for Kucinich. But this may not be just any cross-country speaking trip. Last year, Kucinich flirted with running for a new House seat in the Evergreen State before seeking re-election in a redrawn Ohio district against his longtime colleague, Rep. Marcy Kaptur.”

We noted earlier that Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum again used Etch A Sketches today.

Well, the DNC now has cut its second anti-Mitt Romney Etch A Sketch video.

While Democrats and rivals are having fun with this and continuing to try and fuel a narrative, the buzz around this has died down considerably today and you wonder when -- or if -- it jumps the shark.

By the way, CNBC reports that the biggest benefactor from all this might be the maker of the toy.

It reports: Ohio Art, the company that makes Etch A Sketch, saw its stock jump up a whopping 212.5 percent today.

Bloomberg writes that Etch-A-Sketch shows Romney “is facing fresh doubts about his commitment to core party principles.”

Politico calls this the Etch-A-Sketch campaign. “The problem is, this kind of rhetorical misfire is nothing new for Romney’s campaign,” it writes.

The AP’s Benac says the candidates are exhausted and it shows: “[T]hey make mistakes, get testy and lose perspective. At best, they may just seem to be off stride, muffing key lines and sounding, well, tired.”

“Harold Clark Simmons is on a mission to defeat President Obama in November and will spend almost any amount of money to do so. On Karl Rove's advice, the 80-year-old Texan head of chemicals and metals producer Contran Corp. and his wife, Annette, are the largest contributors to the 2012 election, having donated over $18 million to conservative PACs since the start of the race,” The Daily Beast/Newsweek writes. “Which Republican wins is not the point. "Any of these Republicans would make a better president than that socialist Obama," Simmons told The Wall Street Journal. "Obama is the most dangerous American alive."

Forbes lists the 80-year-old as the 33^rd richest man in America with a net worth of $9.5 billion. He has apparently tripled his net worth since just 2010, when Forbes listed him as the 93^rd richest man in America with a net worth of $2.5 billion.

“In a Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday, 38 percent of respondents said political leaders spend too much time talking about religion. The measure was an all-time high for the poll; it was just 12 percent in 2001, when Pew began tracking the public’s appetite for religion in politics,” the Boston Globe writes. “Most people, 54 percent, said churches should stay out of politics, while 40 percent said they should enter political and social debates. As recently as 2006, public opinion was essentially the opposite, with 51 percent of Americans believing churches should speak out and 46 percent saying they should keep quiet.”

GINGRICH: He was on FOX last night talking about Etch-A-Sketch.

ROMNEY: Overlooked by Etch-A-Sketch, Romney’s full embrace of George W. Bush and TARP: "I keep hearing the president say he's responsible for keeping the country out of a Great Depression. No, no, no, that was President George W. Bush and Hank Paulson."

Not only did Jeb Bush pick Romney as his choice for president, but he also said he should pick Marco Rubio as his vice president. "He is the best orator of American politics today, a good family man,” Bush told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “He is not only a consistent conservative, but he has managed to find a way to communicate a conservative message full of hope and optimism.” And: "The problem lies in the tone," Bush said. "You do not have to sacrifice principle to win the Latino vote."

The Washington Post notes that it’s unlikely Mitch Daniels will endorse before the primaries are over. (H/t GOP 12.)

Surprise. Romney leads in Connecticut, which votes April 24. Quinnipiac has him up 42%-19% over Santorum.

SANTORUM: Rich Lowry doesn’t think Santorum can win in Wisconsin. “Santorum doesn’t win unless evangelicals are more than half of the electorate. In Wisconsin in 2008, they were just 38 percent,” he writes.

FLORIDA: Political Wire: “The Hotline notes that the Florida Republican party has made a ‘very substantial’ television ad buy touting Florida Gov. Rick Scott's (R) record as he seeks to recover from dismal approval numbers.”

INDIANA: “Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar’s residency problems just grew more uncomfortable: He’s reimbursing the Treasury for erroneously billing taxpayers for a series of hotel stays in Indianapolis in recent years. The long-serving Senate Republican said because of staff errors, taxpayer money was improperly used to pay for about $4,500 in hotel expenses over the past decade. After an inquiry from Politico, Lugar’s office investigated and acknowledged the issue, and the senator is now taking steps to repay the money.”

The NRCC is going after a Super PAC trying to defeat incumbents and which the Wall Street Journal partially credits with taking down Reps. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) and Don Manzullo (R-IL). “As The Wall Street Journal reported this week, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is trying to maintain the GOP’s large majority in the House, has warned that companies who help campaign against incumbents might find their services are no longer needed by some parts of the Republican Party,” it writes.

In late September, while the political world was speculating about whether Chris Christie might jump into the GOP race and buzzing about First Michelle Obama shopping incognito at Target, Rick Santorum was quietly doing something of his own -- making money.

On Sept. 29 and 30, while he was mired in single digits in the polls and no one was giving him a chance to win the nomination, Santorum went and made $18,200 in two speeches, according to an amendment to his personal financial disclosure released today.

Santorum was paid $9,100 apiece speaking through the conservative Young America’s Foundation before the Institute of Management Accountants and before the Family Institute of Connecticut.

A look back at Santorum’s schedule for those two days shows no public events or campaigning.

In 2007, Mike Huckabee broke with the tradition of suspending giving paid speeches during campaigns when he hopped off the trail for several then-undisclosed speeches. He eventually lost the nomination, but got his own television show.

Santorum made between $1.4 and $1.6 million in the year-and-a-half reporting period before he launched his bid for president, according to his financial disclosure. But, on the trail, like Huckabee, he has lamented the personal financial cost of running for office.

Despite louder and more serious talk among Republican insiders about the possibility of a brokered convention, the Obama campaign once again kept its focus on Mitt Romney.

In a conference call today to respond to Romney’s speech on economic freedom today at the University of Chicago, the Obama campaign slammed Romney's tax plans today and said he faces "a significant trust deficit" with voters, particularly on the issue of gas prices.

"Gov. Romney did not mention the issue of energy and gas prices, and I think that's something that's on the mind of all Americans right now," said Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton economics professor, who was a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers before leaving the White House in February.

Rouse went on to argue that reducing America's dependence on foreign oil sources would ease the burden of price spikes – and she took aim at Romney for failing to address fuel costs.

But the White House was unable to pass a comprehensive energy policy through Congress even with broad Democratic majorities in the president’s first two years.

The conference call and focus on energy also come as rising gas prices threaten President Obama’s recent momentum and his upcoming tour of swing states to tout new proposals on the subject.

Asked if President Obama's efforts to address those costs are breaking through to the public, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt accused Republicans of failing to give the president credit for new drilling initiatives.

"They're completely distorting the record here," LaBolt said, specifically of GOP candidates of Obama's record on Gulf drilling. "And I think for a candidate like Mitt Romney who's already facing a significant trust deficit with voters across the ideological spectrum that that would compound his issues."

Without mentioning Newt Gingrich by name, LaBolt also took aim at "elected officials who are going out and saying gas is going to be $2.50 if they get elected."

On Solyndra, the energy company the president touted and went belly up after receiving a government grant, the campaign would only say that Romney would "turn his back on the clean-energy sector."

Responding specifically to his speech today, Rouse accused Romney of structuring a tax plan that would hurt middle-income Americans.

"His plan actually makes our tax system more regressive and really will not help out the middle class," she said.

And, touting the White House's regulatory reforms, she disputed the widely repeated GOP critique that regulation generally strangles job creation.

"There is not actually any evidence that regulatory burden actually has a meaningful impact on employment or on the economy now," she contended.

The AP fact-checks the GOP field and the president’s new film: “Rick Santorum says oil drillers in the Gulf of Mexico are being slammed by ‘worse and worse and worse’ delays in getting federal approval even as gas prices go through the roof. Actually, the wait for permits is getting better and better. Newt Gingrich boasts that small donors are powering his Republican presidential campaign. In reality, one deep-pocketed financial angel and other big money people have been doing loads of heavy lifting, too.

“The claims of the Republican presidential rivals are not getting the exposure they once did, ever since the crackling series of debates drew to a close. But in smaller venues or turns on TV, the assertions still fly, as do exaggerations, oversimplifications and outright mistakes. So, too, on the Democratic side. A polished new film from President Barack Obama's campaign, out Thursday night, pushes the gauzy hero worship beyond what has really happened in recounting the auto industry bailout and recovery.”

ROMNEY: Romney was on FOX again, per GOP 12. He dismissed Gingrich’s claim that he could get $2.50 gas and said there would not be a brokered convention. “Look, we're not going to go to a brokered convention," he said. "One or the other of us among the three or four that are running is going to get the delegates necessary to become the nominee. As it gets closer towards the end, it's going to be clear we've got someone who's in the strong lead. The states that remain will vote for that person and that person will get the delegates and become the nominee."

“Mitt Romney has repeatedly argued that no rival can catch up to him in the delegate race, making him the inevitable Republican nominee,” The Hill writes. “But in the convoluted delegate soup that candidates must navigate, another potential outcome has emerged: that Romney himself will come short of securing enough delegates to earn the nomination.”

Romney denied that there’s any kind of deal in the works with Ron Paul or that he has had any conversations with him on the subject. 

Chris Christie campaigns with Romney in Illinois today. The New York Post said it was a “last-minute scheduling,” and “Romney wasn’t even planning to campaign in Illinois until Monday.”

Yesterday was the (real) first day of the NCAA Tournament but Romney’s not filling out a bracket. "I'm not plugged in well enough this year to do that," he said.

SANTORUM: “[W]hile many pundits believe a Gingrich withdrawal would allow the conservative vote to coalesce around former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and defeat former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the data is less clear,” the Boston Globe reports.

This AP story ran in the Miami Herald: “Santorum was forced to repeatedly clarify remarks he made Wednesday, when he said English would have to be the ‘main language’ for Puerto Rico to become a state.” Santorum said, “"I never said only English should be spoken here. Never did I even intimate that," Santorum told local reporters gathered in El Capitolio, the island's Capitol building. "What I said was that English had to be spoken as well as other - obviously Spanish is going to be spoken, this would be a bilingual country."

Message Un-discipline… “Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has been busy in Puerto Rico, meeting with the island’s Governor, evangelical and political leaders, and even enjoying an ‘helado de coco’ in the streets of Old San Juan with his family,” NBC Latino reports. “But it is going to take more than some coconut ice cream to take the heat off his recent comments that Puerto Rico would have to make English its main language if it ever wanted to become a state. ‘I think Santorum put his foot in his mouth, or ‘metió la pata’ as we say in Spanish,’ says Dr. Juan Flores, a professor of Latino Studies at New York University. ‘It’s just a way of turning the whole country off, no matter what their political stripes or preferences,’ he adds.”

And: “A former Puerto Rican senator and pro-statehood supporter, Oreste Ramos, said Santorum should no longer count on him as a delegate after hearing of Santorum’s ‘English’ comments.”