From NBC's Pete Williams
Experts on the military justice system agree that President Obama was unwise to make a comment last week about Army Private Bradley Manning, accused of giving classified US government documents to Wikileaks. But they disagree about whether the statement will undermine the military's prosecution of Manning.

After a fundraising event in San Francisco last Thursday, the president was approached about the Manning case, an encounter recorded on cellphone video and uploaded to the Internet. After explaining that federal law prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents, Mr. Obama said, "He broke the law."

Presidents and other senior officials often make statements about the guilt of defendants who are awaiting trial before a jury. What's different about this case, however, is that President Obama is the commander-in-chief of the military, and Manning will be tried before a military court.

Rules for courts martial ban the exertion of "undue command influence." Many supporters of Pvt. Manning have argued that his trial is now tainted because the president, the nation's most senior commander, has pronounced judgment that Manning is guilty. 

In an op-ed appearing in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times, a former military prosecutor says many critics of the court-martial system often believe that military jurors simply ask themselves one question, referring to their commanders: what does the Old Man want us to do?

"When the jurors retire to the deliberation room at the Manning court martial, they will not have to speculate on the answer; arguably the most important 'Old Man' of them all has spoken, and he said Manning is guilty," writes Morris Davis, a retired Air Force officer and former prosecutor at Guantanamo.

The president should have been more circumspect, agrees Eugene Fidell, an expert on the military justice system. But he believes Obama's comment will not affect the outcome of Manning's trial.

"It will generate motions by the defense and will require some care in selecting the military members of the jury, a process already complicated by the extensive press coverage of this case," Fidell said. "It was going to have to be a very careful questioning process for potential jurors, to ask if they have seen reports or read about the case. Now they'll also have to be asked whether they heard the president's comment and if that would make any difference to them. But that will be the extent of it, and they'll get on with the trial."

From NBC's Jason Seher
Although panelists at an Afghanistan conference last week presented visions containing little consensus on how to move forward in the war-torn nation, they all agreed on one thing: something needs to change.

"A great power can’t leave a country like Afghanistan a great deal worse than it found it,” said Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Headlining the panel in D.C. -- which was hosted by The Afghanistan Study Group, a creation of both the liberal-leaning New America Foundation and the Center for International Policy -- Pickering repeatedly called on policymakers to abandon the current counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and reaffirm their commitment to staying the course in the former Taliban stronghold.

"We can only leave if leaving in a way that at least establishes some stability, some openness and some safety," he said.

But most indicators reveal Afghanistan is becoming less safe.

Since President Obama's Dec. 2009 speech announcing he would send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, casualties for both U.S. military personnel and Afghan civilians have risen dramatically -- though the surge was always expected to see increased violence . According to Defense statistics, 436 U.S. soldiers died fighting in Afghanistan in 2010, making last year the deadliest on record since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001.

And this year promises to be just as deadly. So far, 74 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan this year. The civilian numbers, while harder to measure accurately, paint a much starker picture of the Afghan reality. A March Congressional Research Service Report said that nearly 2,800 Afghan civilians died in 2010, almost double the number of civilians killed by the Taliban and other anti-government elements in 2007.

Pickering -- who also served as a former U.S. ambassador to India and Russia -- argued that Afghanistan's instability continues to rise, because the president did little to course correct President Bush's counter insurgency model when he remapped the Afghanistan-Pakistan mission. With only 100 active al-Qaeda operatives left inside Afghan borders, Pickering questioned the utility of devoting 30,000 additional ground troops to hunting such a small number. And while he agreed on Obama needed to follow through on his other promise -- to open the door to negotiations with the Taliban -- Pickering said the military objectives reinforce the total victory ideology that dominated the first years of the Iraq war.

A vital interest?
To diplomats like Pickering and longtime Foreign Service professionals like Paul Pillar, the current U.S. strategy only proves that the Obama administration and the military view the counter insurgency as an end in itself -- a far different goal than the original mission.

"We've had a nine-and-a-half-year-long mission creep where we've lost sight of why we initially went there," Pillar, director of Georgetown's Center for Peace and Security Studies, said. "A U.S. military victory in Afghanistan is not going to determine whether or not the U.S. is safe from international terrorism."

A former national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia, Pillar said the United States accomplished most of its progress in Afghanistan during the first few months of Operation Enduring Freedom and has made little headway since. Though neither President Bush nor President Obama made a “Mission Accomplished”-like blunder in Afghanistan, Pilar said Obama's "we keep at it mentality" and his rallying cry against quitting on the Afghan people, mostly explains why the current strategy is so disconnected from what is actually achievable on the ground. Since the United States entered Afghanistan in 2001, Pillar explained, the military has bombed so much of the country that terrorists have little incentive to leave their strongholds in northwest Pakistan.

But that assertion is a point of contention within the foreign policy community. While Pillar firmly believes the lynch pin of U.S. foreign policy should NOT be preventing Afghanistan from once again becoming a terrorist safe haven, others argue it is a vital American interest.

"When Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, every Muslim insurgent group was headquartered there," Peter Bergen, director of the New America Foundation’s National Security Studies Program, said.

A terrorism analyst for CNN and author of The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America & Al-Qaeda, Bergen said the Afghanistan mission is more than a moral obligation to produce a somewhat stable state and still has real implications for American security. The rise in casualties over the past few years has given a renewed credibility to the danger a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan allied with Islamic terrorists. Citing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bergen argued that preventing the Taliban from returning to power in Afghanistan would directly impact the number of global terrorist attacks.

"The Taliban are the Taliban," he said. "The idea that they will turn into a group of Henry Kissingers over time is ridiculous."

Managing the Afghan future
That raises another question: Are Afghans ready to manage their own future?

Yet Joshua Foust, author of Post-Soviet Central Asian Interests in Afghanistan, argues that’s the wrong question altogether. "We should be asking if this is the right government," he said. "Afghans know how to run themselves. They're illiterate but they're not stupid."

Foust expressed his hope in the in the country's progress, despite its deteriorating security. Since 2001, Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product has increased 300%, and seven more million children, including two million girls, attend school than when the war began.

Afghans, Foust added, are more optimistic about their future because they are much better off now than in the recent past. While admitting "it's not perfect," he insisted conditions in Afghanistan have improved enough that Afghans are now capable of running their own affairs. But the current government could present an obstacle to continued improvement.

Though a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 62% of Afghans approve of Hamid Karzai's government, Foust argued the current constitutional system is the wrong government for Afghanistan. Beyond the reported corruption, the district level elections promised in 2005 have been indefinitely postponed. This not only prevents a large portion of rural Afghans from having a stake in the new government (Afghanistan has 398 provincial districts); it also centralizes power in a country where strong governance is completely foreign. This has Foust and Pickering trying to shift the conversation in Afghanistan from asking when Afghans are ready to govern to a separate -- and maybe more important -- question: If the current government is right for Afghanistan.

"We cannot substitute western paradigms like federalism," Pickering said.

A trust deficit?
This question of legitimacy complicates the U.S. position, especially when it comes to negotiating the transition of power that will ultimately need to take place. Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, claimed the president and the Pentagon continue to struggle producing a viable economic plan for Afghanistan operations, because they remain unsure of how long the U.S. will need to stay. While the Obama administration has said it wants to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghans by 2014, in those three years, according to Katulis, there are a whole host of objectives American strategists need to achieve -- and have no idea how.

"We need to check our American exceptionalism at the door," Katulis said. "We can't do it all. We simply cannot do a lot of things and were going to keep running in circles in Afghanistan if we don't realize that."

Katulis argued those inside government failed at the strategic level by allowing the military to clear areas of Taliban and other anti-government elements, only to let those sectors fall back under opposition control because U.S. forces lack the necessary troop levels required for population protection. Now, as the Karzai government continues to press American diplomats to agree to a long-term strategic partnership or leave Afghanistan, Katulis believes this bullish attitude of all or nothing creates an ideological block to negotiating a U.S. exit.

"Negotiations can only succeed if they don't have to succeed," James Dobbins, director of RAND Corporations International Security and Defense Policy Center, said.

Author of After the Taliban, Dobbins said leaving Afghanistan is so difficult, because a majority of policymakers still view America's withdrawal as an admission of defeat in a war vital to U.S. interests. In Dobbins’ view, United States diplomacy in Afghanistan has a credibility problem. Even though the U.S. military officials and diplomats have been negotiating with both the government and the Taliban since the latter days of 2001, defeat is still not an option.

And then there are the U.S. attitudes about the war. “Nobody gives a hoot about it around here," Richard Vague, co-founder of the Afghanistan Study Group, said. "The only time Afghanistan comes up is in campaigns and someone is saying cut and run or inciting votes against it. The rest of the time it’s on autopilot,” costing the U.S. a significant amount of money.

A co-chair for the New America Foundation, Vague reasoned most lawmakers remain mum on Afghanistan because they do not want to rile public sentiment at home by advocating abandoning the cause abroad. The human toll of the Afghanistan mission makes speaking out against the war a risky political proposition, he said. Because so many troops have given their lives fighting the Taliban, politicians fear coming out against the war now would desecrate the American sacrifice in the minds of voters and create considerable blowback in the next election.

Republicans quiet at home
This is especially true in Republican ranks. Grover Norquist, the conservative president of Americans for Tax Reform, said Republicans and conservatives in general do not engage in a substantive discussions on leaving Afghanistan.

"You have this caucus of Republicans," Norquist said, "who don't feel like they have permission yet to speak out against this."

As expected, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) appointed GOP Congressman Dean Heller to fill Sen. John Ensign's (R) Senate seat.

Heller is already running in 2012 for a full six-year term for the seat.

Sandoval also said that an announcement of the special election to fill Heller's congressional seat is forthcoming.

Per Sandoval's press release:

"A fiscal conservative who believes in limited government, Dean will fight to keep taxes low and balance the federal budget. He understands that the federal government spends too much money and places too many regulatory burdens on small business. Just as Senator John Ensign fought for states' rights and sound economic policies, Dean will speak out for the concerns of every-day Nevadans. I am confident he will help get Nevada working again.

"Dean Heller is a compassionate man of deep personal integrity, with a down-to-earth approach to public service. I have no doubt Dean will serve Nevada in the Senate for many years, and I look forward to working with him on behalf of the state we both love so much.

"Recognizing that this appointment will create a vacancy in the office of U.S. Representative from Nevada's Second Congressional District, I pledge to work closely with Secretary of State Ross Miller on the timing of the upcoming transition and resulting special election. I have asked Secretary Miller to provide me with information on the rules for conducting this election at his earliest convenience."

*** UPDATE *** DSCC spokesman Matt Canter sends along this statement in response:

As the unelected senator, Dean Heller will now be forced to explain to all Nevadans why he is working in Washington to end Medicare and cut loans for small businesses that create clean-energy jobs in Nevada. Becoming the unelected senator will come with a level of heightened scrutiny that will hurt Heller in a general election.

When presented with President Obama’s long-form birth certificate by a NBC News producer Shawna Thomas, Donald Trump ignored it, and instead reverted to a stock talking point about how he’s proud to have pushed Obama to release it.

The video was shot by an NBC News crew and edited by Domenico Montanaro.

The blogosphere erupted with reactions to the White House’s release of President Obama’s so-called “long-form” birth certificate today.

Liberal blogger Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly doubted the disclosure would discourage conspiracy theorists who believe President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.

If there's one thing right-wing voices have made clear, it's that reason and evidence are irrelevant. They didn't come up with a birther garbage out of sincere concerns; they came up with this to cast doubts on the president's legitimacy and make him out to be The Other in the eyes of the mainstream.

I don't necessarily blame White House officials for wanting to end this nonsense once and for all, but if they're expecting the hysterical right to move on, they're likely to be disappointed.

John Aravosis at the liberal AMERICAblog suggested the move is too little, too late.

There doesn't appear to be anything more on this form than on the other one they released three years ago.  Why didn't they just release this then and be done with it?

Blogger Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast also asked why Obama waited so long, and assailed the media for not putting more pressure on the Obama administration for providing the long-form certificate in order to give the birthers the material evidence they were calling for.

I think this should have been done long ago. Because a president has to put his public responsibilities before his pride and his privacy. That's the price of the job - to defuse or debunk conspiracy theorists or just skeptics with all the relevant information you have.

It's also the job of the media always to press for more information, not less. But so many spent their energy arguing that Obama need do no more and piling on the Birthers. They still seem to think they are gatekeepers, possessors of the power to decide what is or is not legitimate for citizens to ask of their public officials.

Get over yourselves, MSM. And do your job - not defending the right of people in power to protect themselves, but scrutinizing them relentlessly, with every fact and document you can get. You don't defuse conspiracy theories or end legitimate doubts by telling public officials they need not provide clear and available evidence to rebut them. Yes, some will still suspect. But many will walk away. That's worth doing.

Meanwhile, Tanya Somander at the progressive blog Think Progress noted that Donald Trump said last week that he would release his tax returns when the president released his birth certificate.

Of course, now that Obama has officially put this issue to rest, the secretive billionaire may find another excuse to avoid releasing the potentially damning documents — like demanding Obama’s college records, his SAT scores, college thesis, and on and on…

In fact, conservative blogger Erick Erickson at Red State wondered if the president would now also release his college transcripts, adding that the release of the birth certificate confirms “what most of us have always known.”

Of course, once the birth certificate issue is dispatched, will he release his college transcripts? That’s the issue for me.

When the birth certificate is reviewed and we can see what most of us have always known — that he was born in Hawaii — we can move on. For some, moving on will be to wonder what religion the man is.

He can’t win on this. Not that I care.

Jonah Goldberg at the conservative NRO noted what he views as the irony of President Obama decrying this episode of “silliness” just before engaging in, as Goldberg sees it, frivolous pursuits.

[Obama] railed against “distractions” and “silliness” that prevent us from grappling with our very serious problems.  Then, he left to go tape the Oprah Winfrey show and hold a fundraiser. No word on when his next tee time will be.

Goldberg’s NRO colleague Daniel Foster predicted that this disclosure would not assuage the hardcore “birthers.”

Here’s the long-form birth certificate, so birthers can get to work on explaining why we now need a photograph of President Obama’s parents standing in front of Kapiolani hospital with a copy of the August 4, 1961 edition of the Honolulu Star Advertiser in one hand and a complete genome in the other.

Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey at Hot Air said the news is actually a lost political opportunity for President Obama, as he tried to paint the issue, and those pushing it, as a distraction, relatively early in the election cycle.

Some of those who pushed this issue over the last two-plus years are now crying foul, saying “Why did he wait this long to release it?”  Why would Obama have wanted to release it?  After all, it made for a perfect way to paint his opposition as lunatics.  Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t wait until after the GOP primaries.  He could have used the bump more then than now.

Morrissey also said the issue dissipated “whatever credibility [Donald] Trump had.”

Who gets hurt worse by the White House release of Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate?  If you think that it might be the man who practically made it his campaign platform, think again.  Donald Trump says he totally had Adonis DNA on the issue, or something… He won in the same sense that Charlie Sheen is #winning! by getting canned and then embarrassing himself on a national tour.

AP

President Obama addresses the press and discusses the release of a longer-form birth certificate that reaffirms he was born in Hawaii.

From NBC's Athena Jones
President Obama spoke to the press this morning after the White House released his birth certificate for a second time.

The papers -- handed out during an off-camera "gaggle" in the briefing room early today -- were described by Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer as "the president's long-form birth certificate" and the correspondence between the president's lawyer and the Hawaii State Department of Health that led to the release of the documents.

The so-called birther issue has dogged Obama since the presidential campaign and Donald Trump, a potential Republican candidate for president, has repeatedly questioned the president's place of birth in recent days.

During the morning briefing, which was also attended by White House Counsel Bob Bauer, Pfeiffer told the press that the campaign requested the birth certificate from the state of Hawaii in 2008 and posted it on the campaign web site once they received it. He said independent fact checkers had inspected the document at his campaign headquarters and "declared that it was proof positive that he was born in Hawaii."

Noting that the networks were breaking in to cover his statement, Obama said he could not get this kind of coverage for "all kinds of other discussions" like national security and went on the blast the press for focusing on an issue he believes is a distraction. Still, today's remarks were notable because they marked the first time the president has addressed the issue of his place of birth in such an extensive, public and high-profile way, despite sometimes making jokes about what his administration has treated as a fake controversy.

The president said he had "watched with bemusement" and been "puzzled" by the degree to which the issue of his place of birth has continued to make headlines, particularly earlier this month when the Republican House put forward its budget and he gave a speech about his own budget priorities.

While saying he would not normally address such an issue, he said he wanted "to make a larger point" in speaking today and to encourage the media and the American people to focus on these and other issues, like the budget debate ahead.

"I'm confident the American people and America's political leaders can come together in a bipartisan way and solve these problems," he said, before going on the warn, "We're not gonna be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers."

He said, "We live in a serious time" right now and it's possible to deal with the issues in a way that will make our children and grandchildren proud.

Obama acknowledged this latest release of documents would not please everyone.

"I know that there's gonna be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not  be put to rest, but I'm speaking to the vast majority of the American people as well as to the press," he said. "We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do."

Pfeiffer said the birth certificate handed out to the press today was the same document that every Hawaiian receives when they contact the state to request their birth certificate and the same one they take to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get their driver's license and that they take to the federal government to get their passport. "It is a legally recognized document."

We're shooting another edition of Inside the Boiler Room. Got a question? Post it below!

From NBC's Shawna Thomas
PORTSMOUTH, NH -- Donald Trump is "proud" of himself for, as he puts it, "getting the president to release his birth certificate." In the minutes before Trump landed in Portsmouth, NH, to begin a day of stumping, the White House released President Obama's long-form birth certificate, and Trump told the press he heard about it while flying to the airfield.

"Today I'm very proud of myself, because I've accomplished something that no one else has been able to accomplish," Trump said, adding, "Our president has finally released a birth certificate."

However, he said he would have to check out the certificate himself and wondered why the president didn't do this "a long time ago."

With his Trump-emblazoned helicopter behind him, he began to answer questions about the birth certificate issue and whether he would run or not. Trump reiterated that he wouldn't announce until NBC's Celebrity Apprentice is over, but that the public would be "surprised" by his decision. "I think if I do run I'll do very well. Look, I'm already leading the polls and I'm not running." He continued, "I think I'd beat Obama."

Trump and the press moved away from the "birther" issue, allowing him the chance to disagree with the President on how he's handling rising gas prices in the country saying Obama "should be focused on OPEC and getting those prices down." As well as Libya where Trump said he would've handled that situation differently, "The rebels, I hear, are controlled by Iran and Al Qaeda...You could end up with worse than Khaddafy perhaps."

After the press conference, Trump heads to the Roundabout Diner to meet and greet with local diners.

The White House this morning released President Obama's so-called "long-form" birth certificate. It shows he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961 at 7:24 pm. It is signed by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, the attending doctor, and registrar.

An image of President Obama's longer-form birth certificate released today by the White House.

(Here's a copy of the long-form birth certificate.)

During the campaign, Obama released a shorter version, a "Certification of Live Birth," which serves as the official document released by the state of Hawaii and recognized by the federal government. It's the document Hawaiians, for example, would use to get a passport.

This conspiracy theory has been debunked by several news organizations, including NBC News, but it has gained new life as Donald Trump, considering a Republican bid for president, has essentially campaigned on the issue.

This morning at a news conference, Trump took credit for the release of the document.

"Today I'm very proud of myself, because I've accomplished something that no one else has been able to accomplish," Trump said in New Hampshire, adding, "Our president has finally released a birth certificate. I want to look at it, but I hope it's true. ... But he should have done it a long time ago. ... But I am really honored to have played such a big role in hopefully, hopefully, getting rid of this issue."

But he went further, saying that the document has to be verified.

"I am really proud, I am really honored," Trump said, adding, "So I feel like I've accomplished something really, really important. ... I'm taking great credit."

This issue has been popular with a fringe portion of the conservative base, but recent polling showed that two-thirds of Republicans said either the president wasn't born in the United States or aren't sure.

In a CBS/New York Times poll released Thursday, 45% of Republicans said they believe Obama was born outside the U.S., while 22% said they didn't know, and just 33% said he was born in the country.

A majority of all Americans, however, believe the president was born in the country. 57% said he was, 25% said they believe he wasn't. 18% said they weren't sure.

The town hall heat is on… Who wins the political debate over the Ryan budget depends on how the debate is defined… Panetta to DOD, Petraeus to CIA -- and the upside and downside for Obama… Scoring cheap political points on gas prices (2008 vs. 2011)… How low can Donald Trump go?... Trump’s in New Hampshire today… The 2012 issue terrain… Prosser- Kloppenburg recount begins in WI… And Obama tapes “Oprah” and then hits DNC events in NYC.

From NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg
*** The heat is on: After Republicans and conservative groups drew blood in those 2009 congressional town-hall meetings over health care, you knew that Democrats and liberals would try to do same after House Republicans passed a budget that included phasing out Medicare. As NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell reported on “Nightly News” last night, GOP Rep. Paul Ryan -- the architect of that budget plan -- faced heat from his Wisconsin constituents. “You are a good man, you're an intelligent man but you are not looking out for me," a retired teacher told Ryan. Said another attendee: "My concern is that my 48-year-old son is not going to have Medicare." In Florida, Rep. Daniel Webster (R), who beat liberal Alan Grayson (D) last fall, had to deal with angry outbursts at his town hall. (WFTV has the footage.) And also in Florida, the New York Times reports on GOP Rep. Allen West’s own town hall. “[S]ome of his constituents began on a chaotic note, with audience members quickly on their feet, some heckling him and others loudly defending him. ‘You’re not going to intimidate me,’ Mr. West said.”  

*** Who wins? Who wins this political debate will largely depend on how the debate is defined. If it’s about the budget deficit, Republicans win or at least minimize the damage. According to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, 44% say they think President Obama’s budget plan is better, while 43% think Ryan’s is, and respondents give congressional Republicans the advantage in dealing with the budget deficit. As Ryan told O’Donnell,” I sleep very soundly knowing what I'm trying to do is help fix this country's problems." But if the debate is about changes to Medicare and Medicaid, then Democrats win. Per our February NBC/WSJ poll, a whopping 76% said significant cuts to Medicare were unacceptable as a way to reduce the budget deficit.

*** Panetta to Defense, Petraeus to CIA: NBC’s Savannah Guthrie confirms the long-anticipated changes to President Obama’s national security team. He is nominating CIA Director Leon Panetta to succeed retiring Defense Secretary Robert Gates; he has picked Gen. David Petraeus to replace Panetta at the CIA; and he will nominate former Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker will become the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Guthrie has more: The president called Panetta Monday to offer him the job, and Panetta accepted Tuesday. The idea for Panetta to go to DOD originated with Gates months ago, and Gates lobbied for Panetta to take the job. Panetta, Guthrie adds, was reluctant to leave CIA, but it was clear the White House never had any serious candidate other than Panetta.

*** The upside and downside for Obama: These moves also do these two things: 1) They FULLY shut the door on Petraeus 2012, and 2) they place a political bureaucrat (and we mean that as a compliment) in charge of DOD. Panetta is essentially similar to a Democratic version of Gates – someone who has bipartisan respect and also knows how the town’s machinery works. And he's also "fully formed" a la Gates, meaning Panetta won't care if he makes folks mad on Capitol Hill and on K Street during what's going to be a tumultuous budget reform process within the walls of the Pentagon. Remember, Panetta is a former budget director, he knows numbers too.  The downside for Obama: The moves take Gates out of the Afghanistan discussion publicly and politically. After all, there's going to be a point where the president is going to need a Petraeus to sign off and provide bipartisan cover when the withdrawal begins. And with Petraeus at Langley, he's not going to have the direct contact with the public and the uniformed chiefs to have the same clout as he has now. All of these appointments will fly through confirmation.

*** Scoring cheap political points on gas prices -- 2008 vs. 2011: In the spring/summer of 2008, remember when then-candidate Obama avoided scoring cheap political points with gas prices -- as both Hillary and McCain advocated a gas-tax holiday (which would have taken money away from the Highway Trust Fund)? In the end, Obama won that debate, and gas prices disappeared as an ’08 issue. But now the White House is trying to score cheap political points after House Speaker John Boehner suggested he’d be willing to eliminate oil subsidies. Of course, you can’t blame the White House for wanting to take advantage of Boehner’s misstep. But this is as much a stunt as what we saw in 2008…But it's born out of political necessity. Gas prices are serving as a HUGE drag on public pessimism in general, not just the president's approval rating.

*** How low can you go? First, he raised doubts about whether President Obama was born in the United States. Then he accused him of not writing his best-selling "Dreams from My Father." And now he's charging that the nation's first African-American president (and Harvard's first Law Review president) of not deserving to get into Ivy League schools. What's next? A "your mama" insult? The question is no longer whether Donald Trump has disqualified himself from being a serious presidential candidate (because he has, a long time ago). Instead, it's whether he's staining the GOP by association. How much longer can serious Republicans stay silent as Trump -- who visits New Hampshire today -- hijacks this whole process? Simply put, what Trump is doing is the equivalent of a GOP presidential candidate in 1995 campaigning on the Vince Foster rumors, or a candidate in 1968 suggesting that LBJ was connected to the Kennedy assassination. It is crazy conspiracy talk that has gone mainstream. And while Republicans quietly dismiss Trump as a sideshow, they aren't saying a lot publicly. What are they afraid of?

*** The 2012 issue terrain: The day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, you knew that the 2004 presidential election would be fought over national security. (It's why Republicans chose New York as their convention city, and why Democrats picked John Kerry.) In 2007-2008, with Bush exiting the White House, you knew it would be a "change" election. (Which is why Obama was able to beat Hillary, and why the maverick McCain won the GOP nod.) Yet with more than 550 days until Election Day 2012, it's safe to say we don't know what kind of presidential election it will be.

*** The different narratives: Mitt Romney is hoping it will be a referendum on the economy. But what if the U.S. economy continues to add hundreds of thousands of private-sector jobs per month? And what if gas prices begin to fall in the summer? President Obama is hoping for more jobs and lower gas prices, as well as a resolution to the situation in Libya, so he can campaign on a message of stability. But what if things get worse? Tim Pawlenty is hoping that this February and March becomes a GOP referendum on Romney, and that November 2012 becomes a referendum on Obama. Bottom line: As we pointed out earlier this week, a year and a half from now is a LONG time. The C.W. says it's going to be about the economy. But remember, at this point in the 2008 cycle, the C.W. was convinced foreign policy would be AS important as the economy.

*** Recount begins in Wisconsin: The recount to determine the winner of Wisconsin's Supreme Court race between conservative incumbent David Prosser (who is ahead) and liberal JoAnne Kloppenburg kicks off this morning, NBC’s Jason Seher reports. The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, the body that rules on all election matters in Wisconsin, ordered the start of the massive recount after approving Kloppenburg's request last week. The recount will not be conducted by the GAB, but by the 72 county clerks spread across the state. While county clerks only have until Monday May 9 to finish counting the 1.5 million ballots, the GAB will monitor progress in each county and, by the middle of next week, file for extensions for specific counties if the recount is taking longer than anticipated.   

*** The O’s: President Obama and the first lady head to Chicago today to tape an episode for the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” Afterward, he travels to New York City to hit three DNC events.

*** On the 2012 trail: Cain delivers a speech to Americans for Tax Reform in DC… Gingrich already spoke at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in DC… And Santorum remains in Iowa.

Countdown to NY-26 special election: 27 days
Countdown to Iowa GOP straw poll: 107 days
Countdown to Election Day 2011: 195 days
Countdown to the Iowa caucuses: 285 days
* Note: When the IA caucuses take place depends on whether other states move up

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“Attendees at Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) town hall meeting on Tuesday heaped more scorn on the powerful congressman for backing an extension for the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy,” The Hill writes. “Protesters chanted ‘Ryan stop lying!’ at the House Budget Committee chairman outside his event in Kenosha, Wis. and several members of the capacity crowd interrupted Ryan as he defended his budget plan, according to WTMJ-TV. (Here’s their report.) 

The South Florida Sun Sentinel: “Taking a page from the tea party activists who hammered Democrats at their town hall meetings two summers ago, liberal partisans are making signs, preparing pointed questions, and turning out for Republican congressional town hall meetings.

They're hoping to score political points and also seeking political gold — embarrassing YouTube moments. Tuesday night was U.S. Rep. Allen West's turn.”

The New York Times: “After 10 days of trying to sell constituents on their plan to overhaul Medicare, House Republicans in multiple districts appear to be increasingly on the defensive, facing worried and angry questions from voters and a barrage of new attacks from Democrats and their allies.”

“Lawmakers received more threats of violence in 2010 than any other year on record, according to interviews and FBI documents obtained by The Hill. The surge of threats is mostly attributable to the contentious healthcare reform debate last year.”

The Hill outlines 10 things to watch in the upcoming debt-ceiling fight.

For the third time in a month, President Obama heads to New York to raise money for his reelection bid. “Obama will schmooze with fat cats at a high-dollar fund-raiser at the Waldorf-Astoria, mingle with guests at the home of Sharon Elghanayan, a psychotherapist who married former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine last fall, and then address fans at a Roots concert at Town Hall,” the New York Daily News writes. “The President formally launched his 2012 reelection bid this month and is signaling that New York is a place he'll visit early and often.”

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said yesterday that the party’s presidential field would solidify soon and that he was working to have a “limited number” of presidential forums and debates sanctioned by the party, the L.A. Times reports.

BACHMANN: Politico readers catch a misattributed quote from Michele Bachmann’s cameo in Newt Gingrich’s latest film about history. When she asks “Will this latest generation, as Abraham Lincoln so famously said, will this latest generation hand that torch of liberty to the next generation," she is combining statements from Abraham Lincoln (who coined the phrase “lamp of liberty”) and John F. Kennedy who said “that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”

BARBOUR: The Jackson Clarion Ledger writes that Haley Barbour quit the presidential race when things were going his way: “Even more a factor in 2012 is that fact that tea party voters and other non-establishment Republicans will give GOP contenders like U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann and others a look during the primaries. But at the end of the day, winning the Republican nomination is about winning the support of establishment Republicans who still control the delegates who will comprise the 2012 Republican National Convention. That arena is Haley Barbour's arena.”

Republican strategist Ford O’Connell predicts that Republican presidential hopefuls’ seeking of Haley Barbour’s endorsement will resemble “Chris Christie-like courting,” according to The Hill. “Noting the litany of likely presidential candidates who have gone out of their way to meet with the New Jersey governor in the hopes of winning his backing, O’Connell argued the Mississippi governor is now ‘the most important Republican not running for president.’”

DANIELS: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is passing four different education reform bills poised to bring sweeping changes to the state, which will fulfill “that last, pesky policy goal until now missing from his gubernatorial record that his loyalists hoped he'd take with him into a presidential campaign,” Real Clear Politics reports.

GINGRICH: Newt Gingrich wrote an op-ed for the National Catholic Register titled “Why I Became Catholic,” in which he writes, “Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States in April of 2008 was a turning point for me. The Holy Father presided over solemn vespers with the U.S. bishops in the Crypt Church at the basilica in Washington. Callista’s choir was asked to sing for Pope Benedict at vespers, and as a spouse, I had the unique opportunity to attend the papal visit and was deeply moved by the occasion.”

Gingrich spoke this morning at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell also spoke at the event. 

HUCKABEE: Mike Huckabee says that rumors Fox News is pushing him to make a decision on whether or not to run for president are “total nonsense,” according to The Daily Beast.

PALIN: The L.A. Times characterizes Sarah Palin as having a grassroots campaign presence in Iowa: “Palin's fate right now is in the hands of a California lawyer and ‘tea party’ supporter who has anointed himself her unofficial Iowa state director, and a retired potato chip salesman who is trying to coalesce support for her online. They know each other, but neither is officially connected to SarahPAC, her national political operation.” 

PAUL: He announced yesterday his formation of an exploratory committee for a bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Radio Iowa reports. Paul also introduced his state leadership team, including Drew Ivers, the chairman of Paul’s 2008 Iowa caucus campaign.

ROMNEY: As of yesterday, Mitt Romney’s camp was staying coy on whether the former governor plans to participate in the Fox News debate on May 5, Politico notes. "I don’t have any announcements to make right now on debates," Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom emailed Politico’s Ben Smith yesterday.

Romney will raise money for his exploratory committee on May 18 in Austin, Texas, the Austin American Statesman reports. The event will be a luncheon during a two-day, four-city tour of the Lone Star State.

The Hill/GOP12’s Heinze writes that Romney has seen an uptick in some general-election polling against President Obama, but has seen a drop off some primary polling.

SANTORUM: While speaking in Dyersville, Iowa, Rick Santorum told his audience that one reason John McCain didn’t defeat Barack Obama in 2008 is because he didn’t stress Obama’s record of arguing in favor of infanticide, the Des Moines Register reports. “According to the Annenberg Political Fact Check, Obama opposed Illinois legislation in 2001 and 2002 that called for medical help for any aborted fetus that showed signs of life, even if doctors didn't think it could survive. Illinois already had a law requiring doctors to protect the life of a fetus if it was likely to survive outside the womb.”

Nick Pappas, who worked for Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential bid, joined the Santorum campaign as New Hampshire Field Director, according to a press release.

Gingrich and Bachmann will attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as guests of FOX, The Hill writes.

MASSACHUSETTS: “Alan Khazei has become the first high-profile Democrat to enter the race to challenge GOP Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts,” Roll Call reports.

MISSOURI: “Ann Wagner, a former ambassador and former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, announced Tuesday that she is exploring a run for Congress, if Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) decides to run for Senate,” Roll Call reports.

NEVADA: Republican Sharron Angle says she’ll run in 2012 but not as an independent.

NORTH DAKOTA: “Rep. Rick Berg is very seriously considering a run for Senate in North Dakota and is even likely to make the race, according to sources close to the freshman Congressman,” Roll Call reports.

The Boston Globe’s top story: “House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns. The 111-to-42 vote followed tougher measures to broadly eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states. But unlike those efforts, the push in Massachusetts was led by Democrats who have traditionally stood with labor to oppose any reduction in workers’ rights.”

By NBC's Athena Jones
This afternoon's White House press briefing was dominated by questions about the letter President Obama sent to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), calling on them to pass legislation to eliminate more than $4 billion a year in tax breaks for oil-and-gas companies.

The move to end what the White House calls "wasteful subsidies" was portrayed as a way to both address the deficit and to reduce American consumers' susceptibility to oil-price shocks in the future.

It is hard to argue that given where the price of oil is now that there is a need for subsidies for the oil and gas industry when oil company CEOs themselves have said they do not need these kinds of incentives to continue to explore, Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

"At a time when Americans are suffering every time they go to the gas station and pull out their credit card or the cash to pay a very high price for a tank of gas, to then tell them that actually we need to spend $4 billion a year of their money to subsidize oil companies who this week are reporting massive profits is just not a credible argument," Carney continued. "He [President Obama] certainly believes that now more than ever the argument resonates."

With gas prices approaching record highs nationwide, the letter seemed a clear attempt by the White House to show Americans the president is concerned about the kind of pocketbook issues that are at the top of voters minds. But it's unclear what impact eliminating the subsidies would have on prices at the pump.

Obama has repeatedly said there is no "silver bullet" to bringing down sky-high gas prices, but believes that ending the subsidies -- as he proposed to do in his FY2011 and FY2012 budgets -- and using the money to invest in clean energy was one step that could be taken to ensure Americans don't "fall victim to skyrocketing gas prices over the long term." Carney said there was "nothing symbolic" about this new push to end the tax breaks and insisted it was not part of a political calculation.

"We don't look at this as an issue of electoral politics in 18 months, we look at this as an issue of hardship for average Americans today," he said, adding that he didn't believe people were thinking about the 2012 election while filling up their gas tanks. "You don't have to introduce electoral politics into it to make it a matter of great concern because we are concerned about it here today."

Though Speaker Boehner told ABC he was willing to "take a look" at these subsidies paid to oil companies in an interview that aired last night, his spokesman Brendan Buck released the following statement in response to today's letter from the president:

“The Speaker wants  to increase the supply of American energy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and he is only interested in reforms that actually lower energy costs and create American jobs. Unfortunately, what the President has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump.”

From NBC’s Ali Weinberg
Bloggers on the left and the right shared their theories on why Haley Barbour decided not to run for president.

Conservatives attributed Barbour’s bowing out to low poll numbers and, as Barbour himself noted in a statement, his lack of passion for the race. They also looked at the effect his absence would have on the rest of the 2012 field.

NRO’s Robert Costa noted that the dissolution of Team Barbour due to, as he wrote, meager poll results, means a new slate of “free agent” operatives and donors are up for grabs by other candidates. 

Barbour hadn’t made much of an impression in the polls, clocking in at around 1 percent, but the former Republican National Committee chairman had an outsize influence in the world of GOP insiders. Today, other candidates have one less competitor to worry about and a host of liberated political professionals looking for somewhere to land.

Later in his piece, Costa also wrote that Barbour’s other considerations for dropping out probably included his wife’s reluctance and “the political freight he carried as a former lobbyist and Southern governor potentially running against the nation’s first African-American president... Barbour also had the challenge of representing the establishment at a time of anti-establishment ferment.”

Red State’s Dan McLaughlin seemed to praise Barbour for realizing that he might be good on paper but didn’t want it enough, before he got too committed.

Add Haley Barbour now to the list of people who simply were not willing to make that 100% commitment, and Gov. Barbour knows himself and the task well enough not to pretend otherwise and run halfway.

McLaughlin also speculated on who else is out there, if not Barbour.

The roster of candidates who are genuinely serious GOP contenders - especially if you look at who has won a statewide election some time in the past decade - remains limited. All eyes will now turn to the people who remain on the fence (Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee) or denying they’re interested (Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan) to see who else might round out the field. In particular, the field now seems especially thin on Southerners for a party with so many officeholders in the region.

Hot Air’s Allahpundit suggested Barbour’s decision was not because he wasn’t passionate about a bid, but because he is a clear-eyed pragmatist who calculated that he had a better chance of getting a job in the White House not by running himself, but by hooking on to another candidate’s rising star – perhaps that of Barbour’s friend and rumored candidate, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels.

[I]f Daniels does run, he’s now practically guaranteed Barbour’s endorsement and fundraising help. Barbour might not make it to the White House on his own, but if he joins forces with Mitch the Knife, he could get there as VP, chief of staff, or in any number of other roles. He’s a bottom-line kind of guy, and that’d be a shrewd bottom-line calculation. Now all Daniels has to do is play ball.

Liberal bloggers chose to take shots at elements of Barbour’s personal and professional life that would have hurt him as the race gained momentum.

John Cole at Balloon Juice:

Looks like the polling numbers for “fat redneck” came in at less than awesome.

Daily Kos’ David Nir also mentioned some of Barbour’s liabilities when discussing his dropping out:

Personally, I never saw a path to victory for Barbour, not with his love for the Confederate flag and his long history as a lobbyist. But for a while, I had imagined that Barbour had conned himself into thinking he could win. I guess reality - namely, the reality that he'd be trading a cushy retirement for the rigors of the campaign trail with a limited chance at winning - won out. 

Nir also asked whom, of the remaining presidential hopefuls, Barbour’s decision would benefit most.

Now speculation will turn to who else in the GOP field Barbour's absence benefits most. Is it Mike Huckabee, who probably has the greatest regional appeal in the South? Tim Pawlenty, who, like Barbour, has managed to fool the Beltway into thinking he's "reasonable"?

From msnbc.com's Tom Curry:  America’s Latino population grew almost nine times faster than its non-Latino population in the last decade, jumping from 35 million to 50 million, but an analysis of last year’s elections published Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center shows that Latinos continue to underperform on Election Day.

In last fall’s elections, fewer than 7 percent of voters were Latino, even though more than 16 percent of the U.S. population is Latino.

The Pew study – based on newly released data from the Census’s Current Population Survey -- shows a widening gap over the past 20 years in midterm elections between the number of eligible Latino voters and the number who actually cast a ballot. In 2010 there were 6.6 million Latino voters out of a total of 21.3 million eligible Latino voters.

 “When you look at the Hispanic demographics, particularly among native-born Hispanics, there are an awful lot of people under the age of 18,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, the associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center and the author of the study.

“What’s happening is a lot of those young people -- about 600,000 a year in the last few years -- have been turning 18,” he explained. “They are U.S.-born and they’re eligible to vote, but as we know, young people generally vote at lower rates than we see among the general population. That’s part of the reason we see this rising gap between the number of Hispanics who are eligible to vote and the actual number who do vote.”

He added that in presidential election year, too, there’s a growing gap between eligible Latino voters and actual voters, but the gap is bigger in midterm elections. 

While less than a third of Latino eligible voters said they cast a ballot last fall, nearly half of white eligible voters said they voted and 44 percent of black eligible voters said they did.

Despite the large disparity between eligible voters and actual voters among Latinos, there was an 18.8 percent increase in the number of Latino voters in 2010 compared to the previous midterm election in 2006. That contrasts with a 3.8 percent decline in the number of white voters between the 2006 elections and last year’s elections.

Separately, exit poll survey data from last November’s balloting showed that in House races, 60 percent of Latinos voted Democratic, compared to 37 percent of white voters who did. Exit poll surveys in 2008 indicated that Barack Obama won about two out of three Latino voters.

Looking to next year’s presidential race, analysts are keen to see whether the soaring Latino population in states such as Florida, Virginia, Nevada, and Arizona will benefit Obama’s re-election bid.

Given their preference for Obama, he could gain ground in states such as Arizona and Texas, both of which he lost in 2008, simply by registering more Latino voters.

As Matt Barreto, pollster for Latino Decisions and University of Washington political scientist, said recently, “Even if there were no population growth, if you just did Latino voter registration drives, you could continue to dramatically grow the electorate.” 

You can view the full Pew report here.

Barbour’s no-go again highlights who’s in and who’s out… A pragmatic move for a pragmatic pol?... Mitch Daniels is now on the clock… Why it’s important not to overstate how Barbour’s decision could impact the GOP field: Winthrop poll had him at just 2% in South Carolina… Romney’s “peacetime” blunder… Ron Paul to announce exploratory committee in Des Moines, IA at 4:45 pm ET… Watching the congressional town halls… Obama conducts another round of TV affiliate interviews... And Santorum makes three stops in Iowa.

From Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg
*** In and out: When we wrote yesterday that the 2012 presidential field would come into sharper focus this week, we didn’t know it would mean that yet another potential GOP candidate would decline to get into the race. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) said in a statement yesterday: "A candidate for president today is embracing a 10-year commitment to an all-consuming effort, to the virtual exclusion of all else. His (or her) supporters expect and deserve no less than absolute fire in the belly from their candidate. I cannot offer that with certainty, and total certainty is required.” So far, the prominent Republicans who have said no -- Pence, Thune, Christie, Jeb Bush, and now Barbour -- outnumber the top-tier Republicans who have said yes (and have been running for a while) -- Romney and Pawlenty. Of course, Gingrich and Santorum are testing the waters, and appear likely to get in…

*** A pragmatic move for a pragmatic pol? You don’t become a successful RNC and RGA chairman without being a pragmatic politician, and Barbour’s decision was certainly pragmatic. Our April NBC/WSJ poll telegraphed his ultimate decision not to run for president: Only 1% of national GOP primary voters (2 out of 238) said Barbour was their top choice for president in a potential field of nine Republican candidates. In a smaller five-candidate field, Barbour's support ticked up to just 3% (7 out of 238). In that same poll, being a former lobbyist -- as Barbour was before becoming governor -- was viewed as the worst candidate attribute, worse than having multiple marriages, being a FOX News commentator, or being a leader of the Tea Party movement. In other words, he would have been the most “Washington” of the GOP presidential candidates. Any presidential run presents a difficult path. But Barbour’s path was going to be VERY difficult.

*** Mitch Daniels is now on the clock: With Barbour’s decision not to run, the Beltway speculation now turns to Indiana Gov. -- and Barbour friend -- Mitch Daniels. This actually gives Daniels more time to wait past Memorial Day. On “Meet the Press” back in March, he didn’t flinch when asked if he could wait until the summer to make up his mind. Why Daniels might run: He believes that no other candidate is addressing the deficit/debt, and he now has an opening (in fundraising and establishment support) with Barbour’s no-go. Why he might not run: His national name ID/support isn’t any higher than Barbour’s, and his family is rumored to be against a White House bid. As the Washington Post's Balz wrote yesterday, "Asked about family considerations — friends say his wife has been opposed — Daniels goes quiet. 'I don’t have much more to say about that,’ he said. ‘It’s just a very important factor.'” We might get clues from Daniels when he addresses the American Enterprise Institute on May 4.

*** Is it really a shakeup? Yet it’s probably important not to overstate how Barbour’s decision could end up impacting the eventual GOP field -- beyond fundraising and Beltway buzz. In addition to our national NBC/WSJ survey, a new Winthrop Poll shows Barbour getting the support of just 2% of likely South Carolina GOP voters. The poll finds Mike Huckabee in the lead getting 19% among likely GOP primary voters, followed by Mitt Romney at 17%, Donald Trump at 11%, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin at 8%, and Christie at 6%. (Of course, there’s the real possibility that Huck, Trump, Palin, and Christie don’t even get in the race.)

*** Give peace(time) a chance: Meanwhile, Romney should be glad that Barbour made news yesterday, because his blunder -- mistakenly saying that Obama has been engaged in “one of the biggest PEACETIME spending binges in American history” -- was an unforced error for the one-term former governor. A Romney spokeswoman later told First Read, “He meant to say since World War II.” (Yet how does one misspeak in an unfiltered op-ed?) The good news here for Romney is that the slow start to the GOP race minimized any damage (what if this had occurred at a debate or when all the camps' war rooms are fully operational?). The potential bad news: The slow start only will magnify future gaffes and blunders when the GOP campaign is fully underway.

*** Paul makes his move: Although Barbour is out of the GOP presidential race, another Republican -- Ron Paul -- appears to be in. In Des Moines, IA at 4:45 pm ET, the Texas congressman will announce he’ll be forming a presidential exploratory committee. "We're gonna announce that I'm going to start an exploratory committee,” Paul said on FOX yesterday, per NBC’s Lauren Selsky. “And I'll stop by in Iowa on my way home, and that might lead to the next decision.” Despite his enthusiastic supporters and the millions he raised during his '08 presidential bid, Paul finished fifth in both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. And if he officially gets in, this would be Paul’s third presidential bid; he ran in 1988 as a Libertarian candidate.

*** Town Hall turnaround? We noted yesterday that -- in a reversal from ’09 and ‘10 when it was Democrats facing voters upset over health care -- the heat is now on some Republicans at town halls because of Paul Ryan’s budget proposal to phase out Medicare. There are at least two dozen town halls through the end of this week that liberal groups are tracking, including separate ones today with Ryan and Florida Congressman Allen West. In particular, West -- a freshman who came into office full of controversy -- represents a swing district with lots of seniors in it; 20% of the population in FL-22 is older than 65.

*** Another round of affiliate interviews: President Obama today holds another round of interviews with TV affiliates from states that the Obama re-election campaign is eyeing -- WSB Atlanta (GA), WKYC Cleveland (OH), WTKR Hampton Roads (VA), and WXYZ Detroit (MI).

*** On the 2012 trail: Ron Paul isn’t the only GOPer in Iowa today. Rick Santorum hits Dubuque, Dyersville, and Cedar Rapids.

Countdown to NY-26 special election: 28 days
Countdown to Iowa GOP straw poll: 108 days
Countdown to Election Day 2011: 196 days
Countdown to the Iowa caucuses: 286 days
* Note: When the IA caucuses take place depends on whether other states move up

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In an interview with ABC yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner “said President Obama needs to ‘grow up’ in talks over deficit reduction.” On the topic of the president’s deficit-reduction commission (which, by the way, not a single House Republican on it voted for): “‘While I didn't agree with everything they did, there was a lot in their proposal that was worth of consideration. And what did the president do? He took exactly none of his own deficit reduction commission's ideas. Not one. Come on! It's time to grow up and get serious about the problems that face our country,’ Boehner said.”

At the same time he told Obama to "grow up," Boehner said he "won’t guarantee a vote on raising the debt limit, the latest threat in an increasingly high stakes game of chicken with the White House over whether Congress will inch closer to letting the nation default on its credit," Politico says.

“Boehner, in an interview with POLITICO here Monday, also demanded that President Barack Obama give in to Republican demands to slash spending and dramatically change ‘the way we spend the peoples’ money.’”

More debt-ceiling debate: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who’s up for reelection next year, is in his home state and this morning will speak out against raising the debt ceiling without a more long-term budget fix in place in what he’s calling “Commonsense Solutions Week.” He will talk about his support for the Corker-McCaskill CAP Act (which would cap the amount the federal government can spend as a percentage of GDP each year) and the Udall-Shelby balanced-budget amendment). But Manchin will also talk about protecting Social Security and Medicare.

He will hit President Obama for voting against a debt ceiling in 2006 but wanting to raise it now. And he will hit Congress and the president for not being able to “agree on a plan to reduce our federal debt.” He will also say, in part, per prepared remarks: “There are some in Washington who will say this position is irresponsible, that it jeopardizes our economy and our markets. Amazingly, Washington is the only place where agreeing to trillions of dollars of additional debt and avoiding difficult budget decisions is the ‘responsible’ thing to do. The truth is, raising the debt ceiling without a real budget fix would be the definition of irresponsibility.” 

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the purpose of the Corker-McCaskill CAP Act as a cap on the amount of debt the U.S. can incur. It is actually a cap the amount the federal government can spend as a percentage of GDP each year.

The latest from the Washington Post/ABC poll: “Soaring gasoline prices are biting into household incomes and nibbling at Americans’ fuel consumption — and support for President Obama, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. … Only 39 percent of those who call gas prices a ‘serious financial hardship’ approve of the way he is doing his job, and 33 percent of them say he’s doing a good job on the economy.” And: “60 percent of independents who say they’ve been hit hard by surging gas prices also say they definitely won’t support Obama in his bid for reelection.” More: “In a hypothetical matchup with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the top GOP performer in the Post-ABC poll, Romney wins by 24 points among the independents who have taken a severe financial hit because of gas prices, and the president is up 7 percentage points among other independents.”

BARBOUR: The New York Times on Haley Barbour’s decision not to run for president: He “had hired a campaign manager, lined up influential Republican activists in early-voting states and secured commitments from donors across the country, but he surprised them all on Monday by announcing that he was abandoning his effort to join the Republican presidential race… Mr. Barbour said he lacked the ‘absolute fire in the belly,’ that a candidacy would require.”

Politico on why Barbour pulled the plug: "[E]ven as he was taking all the usual steps – calling donors, visiting early states, hiring operatives – there were signs that the Mississippian wasn’t all in. As he traveled the country testing the waters over the last few months he had begun privately using the same phrase to describe his intense exploratory schedule: he called it his 'death march,' a Republican who heard Barbour use the term recalled."

"Barbour did it in light-hearted fashion, a way to break the tension, but the Republican who heard it found it revealing and wasn’t surprised when the Mississippian begged off.

A member of Barbour’s inner circle said the governor had also offered disclaimers in his conversations with advisers. 'Every time we had discussions, he’d emphasize that, "I’m not there yet and I might not get there,"' said this adviser."

The take by NBC's Michael Isikoff: “Haley Barbour ultimately decided not to run for president after concluding that Barack Obama will be too tough to beat in a general election race, according to two Barbour advisors familiar with the Mississippi governor’s decision making. Barbour ‘wanted to run, he would have loved it,’ said one of the advisers who asked for anonymity. But while he saw a path to winning the nomination, the Mississippi governor and his closest advisors became gun shy when they looked at his prospects of prevailing against Obama and a likely united Democratic party behind him in the general election, the advisers said. ‘It would have required an inside straight,’ the adviser said.”

More from Isikoff: “The hard-headed analysis by Barbour and his top advisers about the difficulties of beating Obama could be depressing news for other GOP candidates preparing to mount a campaign for president. But in Barbour’s case, it was complicated by his own potential political baggage -- a career Washington lobbyist with a southern drawl who has been under fire in the past for making remarks that were criticized as racially insensitive. Both were problems that ‘would have to be managed,’ said one of the advisers.”   

The New York Post: “Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Monday that he will not run for president in 2012 -- a surprising move from the well-connected former lobbyist who had already hired staffers in key states and toured the country meeting with state Republican leaders.”

GINGRICH: Newt Gingrich was paid $300,000 to consult the ethanol lobbying group Growth Energy in 2009, the Washington Post’s Cillizza notes, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

PALIN: Levi Johnston is coming out with a book this fall called, "Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs."

PAUL: “Texas Rep. Ron Paul plans to announce the formation of a 2012 presidential exploratory committee at an event in Iowa” today, the AP writes.

PAWLENTY: NBC's Lauren Selsky notes that Pawlenty said this on FOX last night, when asked about his standing in the polls: "These early polls don't mean much, as you know they're mostly name ID polls. Only about half the people who are Republicans in the country even know who I am, and if these polls were an indicator of future success, our friend Rudy Giuliani would be president today."

“Tim Pawlenty ripped into President Barack Obama’s energy policy Monday, saying he's failed to seize opportunities to drill for domestic energy sources.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes. “‘This is a president who has sat on his hands as it relates to drilling,’ Pawlenty told Chicago's "Don Wade & Roma" radio show.”

ROMNEY: “Live by the op-ed, die by the op-ed,” writes the Boston Globe of the lesson Mitt Romney probably learned after criticizing President Obama in an op-ed for “one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history.” More from the Globe: “The former Massachusetts governor found that when you virtually limit your media exposure to written columns, as opposed to unrestricted media questions, you can control your message — but you also leave no one else to blame when there's trouble.”

Politico writes that Mitt Romney encouraged Donald Trump to jump into the presidential race yesterday, when he said on Fox that Tump is “a terrific guy and I wish him the very best… I hope he runs, come on in, the water's fine."

SANTORUM: Rick Santorum told the Des Moines Register that he believes medical care will be reduced for disabled children under President Obama’s health care law: “In socialized medicine countries, where is what Obamacare is and leads us, children with these types of disabilities simply are not given the access to care.” He used the example of his daughter who was born with a genetic abnormality: “I look at how society with socialized medicine treats children like Bella, and children like Bella don't survive,” he said.

TRUMP: Now Donald Trump is questioning if President Obama deserved to be admitted to Ivy League schools -- an insinuation some might see tinged with race. “I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records. … "I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard. We don't know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president."

Trump will visit New Hampshire tomorrow where he will make approximately eight stops, the New Hampshire Union-Leader’s DiStaso reports. Among those stops are a press availability at Pease International Tradeport and a small fundraiser for the state GOP in Portsmouth.

‘I would do anything for love’… Meatloaf says he’d campaign for Trump.

IOWA: Congressman and kingmaker Rep. Steve King (R-IA) says the Republican primary has gotten off to a slow start because potential frontrunners like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin haven’t been engaged in Iowa, the Globe Gazette writes.

“Tax watchdog Ed Failor Jr., an influential player in Iowa Republican politics, has resigned as president of Iowans for Tax Relief ‘to pursue exciting opportunities,’ he said in an e-mail Monday,” the Des Moines Register reports.

WISCONSIN: “Former state Sen. Pat Kreitlow (D) has announced plans to challenge GOP freshman Rep. Sean Duffy in Wisconsin’s 7th district, a seat Democrats view as a top pickup opportunity in 2012,” Roll Call writes, adding, “Kreitlow, a former television news anchor, flirted with a Congressional run last cycle, when Rep. David Obey’s (D) retirement left the seat open.”

SOUTH CAROLINA: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is heading to New Hampshire on Friday for a presidential “Summit on Spending and Job Creation,” McClatchy writes. The New Hampshire chapter of Americans for Prosperity is hosting the summit and the group will also hold a dinner honoring Ovide Lamontagne, a prominent state conservative and former gubernatorial candidate. 

At last December's Republican Governors Association meeting in San Diego, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) gave a clue about his eventual decision not to run for president in 2012.

Reporters in attendance asked Barbour, 63, what his presidential decision would hinge on. His answer: Whether or not this is what he wanted to spend the next 10 years of his life doing -- two years running for the office, four years in first term, and another four years in a second term.

And it turned out to be the explanation he gave today, when he announced he won't jump into the 2012 race.

"A candidate for president today is embracing a 10-year commitment to an all-consuming effort, to the virtual exclusion of all else," Barbour said in a statement. "His (or her) supporters expect and deserve no less than absolute fire in the belly from their candidate. I cannot offer that with certainty, and total certainty is required."

Yet there was another certainty for Barbour: His path to the presidency would have been a difficult one.

Part of it was lack of name ID, especially outside the Washington Beltway. In the most recent NBC/WSJ poll, only 1% of national GOP primary voters said Barbour was their top choice for president in a potential field of nine Republican candidates.

In a smaller five-candidate field, Barbour's support ticked up to just 3%.

Another part was geography. Being the governor of Mississippi -- a solid Republican state in presidential elections -- most likely wouldn't have benefited a Barbour-led ticket in a general election.

And a final part was resume. In that same NBC/WSJ poll, being a former lobbyist -- as Barbour was before becoming governor -- was viewed as the worst candidate attribute, worse than having multiple marriages, being a FOX News commentator, or being a leader of the Tea Party movement.