Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, addresses the media following a Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. From left are: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-VA, Conference Vice Chairman Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-KS, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, Rep. Susan Brooks, R-IN, Conference Chairman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-WA, and Rep. Tom Price, R-GA.

Published at 4:35 a.m. ET: After their electoral drubbing last November — their second straight in a presidential contest — Republicans have faced a choice. Do they change their policies or their tone?

For now, many top Republicans in Washington seem to have opted for the latter, deciding that a more articulate re-statement of the party's long-held principles will suffice in their effort to attract new voters to the GOP.

"I wouldn't say shift in policy," pollster Jim McLaughlin said of his advice for fellow Republicans. "Republicans have to make adjustments there, but they have to stick to their principles."

McLaughlin's words echo what many Republicans have argued since the election: It's not the party's long-held principles that are the problem, but rather, the way the party's leaders articulate those principles to voters.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., offered a perfect example of current Republican thinking when he delivered a major policy speech that rehashed a number of familiar policies on education, immigration and entitlements under his new "make life work" veneer.

The No. 2 Republican in the House re-framed some of his party's most familiar proposals as an agenda intended to ease the plight of most American families. (The lone new pronouncement was Cantor's endorsement of the thrust of the DREAM Act, a proposal to allow undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children a pathway to citizenship.)

He disputed the notion that his speech was part of a broader effort to soften the GOP's image: "The average American is not thinking about and wondering about where the Republican Party is," Cantor told one questioner.

But the Virginia congressman's speech is representative of an emerging consensus that a more modern restatement of their long-held principles will suffice in seeking to broaden the party's appeal.

And indeed, President Barack Obama's agenda seems poised to stress-test some of the Republican Party's most bedrock policies.

If Republicans can rebuff the president, it could prove the resiliency of their stances. A victory for the president, on the other hand, could tear through the GOP like a buzzsaw. The GOP is arguably facing the most direct challenge in decades to the tenets that have formed the foundation of Republican Party politics for the better part of three decades.

Public opinion shifting
Republicans' decision to hew closely to those long-held principles is not without dissent, however.

"People focus on the 2012 elections, but it's deeper than that," said former Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette, a Republican who leads the moderate "Main Street Partnership."

"It can't just be tone," LaTourette argued. "Because just changing the tone is going to be like putting a lipstick on a pig — it pretties things up, but doesn't really change the fact that it's a pig."

The next four years — the midterm elections in 2014 and the next presidential contest in 2016 — will offer a major test of which school of thought is right.

Obama's second term agenda seems almost directly intended to challenge the GOP on taxes, entitlements, immigration, social issues and foreign policy.

Terminally low taxes, hawkish foreign policy, largely unfettered gun rights and opposition to abortion and gay rights have defined the GOP since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. And as recently as 2004, President George W. Bush's re-election seemed to signify a sweeping affirmation of these central principles.

But Obama already won new revenue during the first installment of the "fiscal cliff" fight, and his forthcoming budget is almost sure to seek more tax increases. The president is demanding an immigration bill and the first major gun law since the 1990s. Obama has also consistently advocated for new gay rights, and public opinion has followed (however slowly). And last month's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that a majority of Americans support abortion rights — an issue which Democrats used against Republicans to great effect during the election — for the first time in history.

On an even more foundational issue, last November's exit polls revealed a change in tide against Republicans' opposition to new taxes under any circumstances. Almost half of voters — and 70 percent of independents — agreed that income taxes should increase, at a bare minimum, for households earning more than $250,000 per year.

For Republicans, the road map back to victory involves speaking less stridently about some of these issues, and emphasizing certain elements of the GOP platform over others. Virtually all Republicans recoil at the comments last fall about "legitimate rape" by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, but no mainstream GOP leader has suggested that the party jettison its longstanding opposition to abortion rights. The new strategy might involve sidestepping conversations altogether about abortions in the instances of rape, instead emphasizing Republican policies that might support women's economic mobility.

And already, a new effort led by former Bush political guru Karl Rove has vowed to combat candidates like Akin in primaries and help to nominate more electable Republican candidates. (A separate effort spearheaded by another onetime Bush adviser, Ed Gilliespie, and two Hispanic GOP governors, Suzana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada, will look to recruit more minority Republican candidates.)

LaTourette, the former congressman, suggested the answer might be simpler. The GOP, he said, is should just get things — something, anything — done.

"There needs to be some sort of reasonable approach to demonstrate that we're all in this together," he said, "a willingness to do the doable and get things done."

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Updated 4:40 p.m. — CHARLOTTE, N.C.  — After being easily re-elected to head the Republican National Committee for another term, Chairman Reince Priebus urged his party to leave behind traditional notions of which states are winnable for the party.

"At the RNC we are dropping ‘red’ and ‘blue’ analysis," he said in remarks shortly after being elected almost unanimously. "We must be a party concerned about every American in every neighborhood."

The chairman called for more outreach to minority communities, a greater focus on digital outreach and jettisoning the party's image as obstructionist.

"We will be a Republican Party that people will want to join," he said of the next presidential election. "A party that inspires again. Not a party that just says 'no'…but a party that says “follow us to a brighter future.”

For Priebus, that future could include an embrace of the plans of some GOP-led state legislatures who hope to reapportion their electoral votes by congressional district rather than the winner-take-all system currently espoused by almost all the states.

"I think it's a state issue but personally I'm pretty intrigued by it," Priebus told reporters after his election.

The idea of changing the electoral vote apportionment — which would reflect the concentrated political sensitivities of carefully drawn congressional districts — has prompted outcry from Democrats who accuse the GOP of changing the rules of a game they proved unable to win in 2008 and 2012.

And not all Republicans are crazy about the idea.

In a statement, a spokesman for Republican VIrginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said he doesn't back the legislation.  "He believes Virginia's existing system works just fine as it is. He does not  believe there is any need for a change," said McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin.

Priebus disputed the notion that a reapportionment would run counter to the idea that Republicans should compete in "every neighborhood."

"It's a state issue," he said. "State legislatures decide it, governors decide it, but as far as our presence in those states — you still have to compete" 

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

In this Jan. 4, 2013, photo, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, walks to a strategy session with GOP members, on Capitol Hill in Washington at the start of the first full day of business for the new 113th Congress.

Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress confidently predicted that the re-election of the president would break the partisan “fever” they claimed had enveloped Washington and the Republican Party.

But the weeks since the election have found Republicans as dogged as ever in their resistance to Obama, whose initiatives – including gun control, immigration reform and efforts to boost renewable energy – still face an uncertain path forward, particularly in an unruly House of Representatives still controlled by a Republican majority. Republicans are signaling a willingness to go to great lengths to bend coming battles in their favor, especially versus a White House whom they view as just as unflinching in its views, if not more so.

“I believe if we're successful – when we’re successful in this election – the fever may break. My hope and my expectation is that after the election, now that it turns out the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again,” Obama said at an event on June 1. “We can start getting some cooperation again, and we’re not going to have people raising their hands and saying – or refusing to accept a deal where there’s $10 of cuts for every dollar of tax increases, but that people will accept a balanced plan for deficit reduction.”

That was an expectation the Obama administration carried all the way through the campaign; Vice President Joe Biden said on MSNBC just days before Election Day: “I think you’re going to see the fever break.”

But the just-finished fight over the fiscal cliff suggested that, if anything, Republicans are more entrenched than ever before. While Obama ultimately won the income tax rate increases on the wealthy, on which the president campaigned, it wasn’t until Republicans had exhausted every feasible move that they relented to Obama’s demand. And even then, it wasn’t until the U.S. had gone over the fiscal cliff – if only for a matter of hours – that Congress agreed to act, passing the bill in the House with mostly Democratic votes.

Debt limit a 'point of leverage'
But Obama might be mistaken to assume his toughest fights with congressional Republicans are behind him. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vow to make Obama a one-term president is now moot, Republicans appear as emboldened as ever to both battle with the administration and keep true to their the ideological conservatism that a large number in the party represent.

The temporary fiscal cliff deal sets up a series of potentially more contentious battles this spring over continuing government funding and authorizing more borrowing authority for the government. And top Republicans are now openly discussing options, like a government shutdown, that they had taken every pain to disavow in 2011.

"It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well being of our country," Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Republicans' No. 2 in the Senate, wrote last week in the Houston Chronicle. "President Obama needs to take note of this reality and put forward a plan to avoid it immediately."

And House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the debt limit fight "one point of leverage" in an interview with the Wall Street Journal; a Politico report, also published Monday, suggested the House speaker was more circumspect about the possibility of defaulting on the national debt. In 2011, Boehner stressed at every turn that defaulting on the U.S. debt was not an option.

Senate Republicans’ budget chief was more explicit: “I think it should be a firm principle that we should not raise the debt ceiling until we have a plan on how the new borrowed money will be spent,” Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.

If Obama was hoping there were more deals to be had on taxes, too, Republicans all but tried to slam the door on such an idea.

“We’ve resolved the tax issue now. It’s over. It’s behind us,” McConnell said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

Fight over defense secretary
And those are only the spending fights; other clashes are already taking shape.

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., whom Obama nominated to be the next secretary of defense, appears likely to face strong Republican resistance in the Senate.

Obama has also suggested that he’s willing to dive headlong – and quickly – into battles over comprehensive immigration reform and gun control, fights which could only threaten to intensify hostilities between the White House and congressional Republicans (and put some moderate Democrats in a tough spot politically in the meanwhile).

The president’s second-term initiatives could fall victim to the same fever that killed the DREAM Act, cap-and-trade legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act and the “public option” in health care reform during his first term.

“There will be plenty of time to take a look at their recommendations once they come forward,” McConnell said Sunday of Obama’s hope for quick action on curbing gun violence. “What’s going to dominate Washington for the next three months here is going to be spending and debt.”

ON THE CAMPAIGN CHARTER HEADING TO OHIO -- The same day as the first presidential debate of the 2012 election, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan will begin a three-day debate camp.

Campaign spokesman Brendan Buck told reporters aboard the Ryan press charter Saturday afternoon Rep. Ryan will head to the battleground state of Virginia on Wednesday for an extended debate prep session, commonly referred to as ‘debate camp.’

No reason for selecting Virginia was given, however, advisers in the past have said the camp would likely be in a battleground state, likely in the Eastern time zone, and “somewhere where there aren’t distractions.”

Mitt Romney, who will be debating President Barack Obama in Denver on Wednesday, held his own debate camp in Vermont in early September.

Portman joins Romney for debate prep in Vermont

Ryan’s first formal debate prep day was Sept. 9 in Oregon with his most recent formal debate practice session held this past Sunday in a hotel in Janesville, Wis. Ted Olson, the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, has been playing the part of Vice President Joe Biden during practice sessions and is expected to be in the Old Dominion state next week as well.

Paul Ryan holes up for debate

Ryan and Biden will debate just once during this election in Danville, Ky., on Oct. 11 – exactly two months after Ryan was tapped as Romney’s running mate, also in Virginia where debate camp will occur.

The campaign told the traveling press a few weeks ago that the seven-term Wisconsin congressman has been going through large white binders -- “organized by issue areas” -- of policy information, research, and news of the day since the Republican National Convention ended at the end of August.

While there has not been much discussion regarding the VP debate in terms of debate expectations -- as most eyes are on the first presidential debate in four days -- two Ryan advisers appeared to downplay expectations for the House Budget Chairman when they spoke to the traveling press in Reno, Nev., in early September.

“Vice President Joe Biden served over 30 years in the United States Senate, he has run for president twice and has severed as vice president for the past four years. He is one of the most experienced debaters in American political life and we definitely don’t take the challenge lightly,” an adviser said.

Ryan focuses heavily on raising money Sunday and Monday -- holding fundraisers throughout Connecticut and New York City – before heading to the key state of Iowa for four campaign events. He will then turn his focus to debate prep leading up to the final weekend before the debate in Kentucky.

Rep. Todd Akin, GOP candidate for the Missouri Senate, recently famous for his "legitimate rape" comments told NBC News that he's "totally in" and has no plans on dropping out of the Missouri Senate race despite many calls from leading Republicans to do so.

A cheerfully upbeat Akin said that internal polls conducted by his campaign showed a close race, one that he was "confident" he could win.

When asked whether the loss of national money from the Republican National Committee and right leaning Super PACs would hurt him, Akin responded, "people don't like the party bosses telling them to put somebody in after they have already elected somebody." He continued, "Everywhere I go, people come up to me and say keep up the fight, so I'm serving them."

Akin then drove his late 90s Ford Explorer off the Capitol grounds, on the rear bumper was a sticker "One Nation Under God" with an American flag.

JANESVILLE, Wis. -- Campaigning for the GOP nominee in his home state with just 100 days before the presidential election, Congressman Paul Ryan said he is confident Mitt Romney can win here in the Badger State this November.

"We haven't gone Republican on top of the ticket since 1984 but we think this time is different. We think it’s different because people in Wisconsin are tired of the direction Washington is going. They don't the president's policies have worked," Ryan told NBC News in an interview Sunday evening. They think, “this is not the uniter. This is not the hope and change. This is a man who is dividing us, who is giving us terrible economic policies, who is growing government, who is growing the debt, and that just doesn't rub right with Wisconsinites."

And the Republican National Committee Chairman predicted victory as well:

"If we win Wisconsin, I think it is lights out for Barack Obama," Chairman Reince Preibus told reporters in Waukesha.

Addressing crowds at Victory Centers throughout Wisconsin this weekend, Rep. Ryan was joined at points by Sen. Ron Johnson and the RNC Chairman, who is originally from Wisconsin. These events – complete with an official Romney bus -- were part of a big surrogate push throughout the country while Romney is overseas.

"This is a national campaign. All these battleground states, what we  want to do is get the message out, President Obama's policies aren't working, we need to go a different direction and we also want to thank all our volunteers," Ryan said -- avoiding the question if this surrogate blitz is really a tryout to be Romney's vice presidential pick.

Sen. Johnson weighed in briefly on the VP speculation.

"I think Paul would do a phenomenal job as vice president.  Nice thing that Gov. Romney has a lot of great choices.  So I've got faith that he'll choose a good one," the senator said.

But Rep. Ryan, who earlier in the day attended the Dousman Derby Days parade and fair where he participated in the 2012 Wisconsin State Frog Jump contest, continued to avoid any talk of being on Romney's ticket.

"I don't think it does the Romney campaign any help or favors to speculate or feed the speculation on this stuff so that's why I just don't make comments about it," he said when asked if he was a 'dark horse' for Romney to select.

The Wisconsin Congressman heads to the 19th District of Florida Monday to campaign for Chauncey Goss who is running for Congress before heading back to Washington, DC for the week.

Alex Moe / NBC News

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks at the ShePAC fundraising event in Washington, D.C., June 25.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped back into the political spotlight Monday night as she headlined her first ever fundraiser in the nation’s capital.

“I am a great optimist,” Rice told attendees, referring to being able to get the country back on track again. She was speaking at an event to raise money for Republican female politicians.

"A little girl grows up in Birmingham, Alabama,” Rice said, noting that her parents were convinced she “could be President of the United States if she wants to be.”

"America has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect and we are going to do it again,” Rice said. “We are going to strengthen ourselves, our democracy at home, strengthen our economy.”

Rice, who is currently a professor at Stanford University in California, is viewed as a dark horse choice for presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate.

While she did not address anything related to Romney’s choice for VP in front of the few journalists – nor did she refer to her raved-about speech from Romney’s weekend retreat in Utah – some in attendance hope she is strongly considered for the position.

“It would be great to have a women vice president,” Amanda Abshire of Arlington, Va. said, mentioning she was “inspired” by Rice’s speech tonight. “I think she has the experience and has the respect of the Republican Party and that the core conservatives would support her. It would be such an awesome thing for conservative women too.”

ShePAC – the political action committee Supporting, Honoring & Electing Republican women – hosted the “DC Kickoff Reception” at the Capitol Hill Club and included nearly a dozen sitting female GOP Congress members and candidates from around the country.

Prior to addressing the general reception for which guests paid $1,000 to hear Rice speak – during which guests munched on a variety of cheeses, meats, and watermelon soup – Rice spent nearly 30 minutes talking with the elected officials and candidates, focusing on national security issues.

Rice, a top-ranked official in President George W. Bush’s administration, mentioned Romney just once in her remarks, saying he would be “a terrific president" – she even weighed in slightly to the on-going immigration debate.

"We need an immigration policy that works but, by the way, we need one that the Congress and the President work out together," Rice said.

Wrapping up her roughly 10-minute speech just feet away from the House office buildings, Rice encouraged the mostly female crowd to keep fighting for America.

“It just has to be that the freest and most compassionate and most generous country on the face of the earth has to continue to be the most powerful,” she said.

Rice remains in Washington Tuesday, where she will give opening remarks at the National Women's Hall of Fame event celebrating 40 years of Title IX.

Attendees Monday night included: Senate Candidates Deb Fischer (NE), Heather Wilson (NM), Sarah Steelman (MO), House Candidates Martha Zoller (GA), Lisa Wilson-Foley (CT), Karen Harrington (FL), Wendy Rogers (AZ), Kim Vann (CA), Nancy Jacobs (MD), Faith Loudon (MD), Leah Campos-Schandlbauer (AZ), Maria Sheffield (GA) and representing his wife Mayor Mia Love (UT), Jason Love. Current Congresswomen included: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX), Rep. Sandy Adams (FL), Rep. Marsha Blackburn (TN), Rep. Judy Biggert (IL), and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL).

Updated 12:53 p.m. - Mitt Romney found himself in a difficult position -- and on the receiving end of an attack by President Obama's campaign -- after an RNC official suggested the presumptive Republican nominee is "still deciding" on his position on immigration.

Bettina Inclan, the director of Hispanic outreach for the Republican National Committee, appeared to suggest the former Massachusetts governor's immigration position was still very much up in the air.

Rebecca Cook / Reuters

Mitt Romney addresses a crowd of supporters during a rally May 8.

"As a candidate, to my understanding, he's still deciding what his position on immigration is," Inclan said at a briefing for reporters on the party's outreach to Latinos.

The quote quickly exploded on Twitter, and the president's re-election campaign condemned the comment.

Inclan later tweeted that she had misspoken, and included a link to Romney's immigration policy.

"Over the past year Mitt Romney has proven time and time again that he is the most extreme presidential candidate in modern history on immigration," said Gabriela Domenzain, the Obama campaign's director of Hispanic press. "Mitt Romney has decided to be the most extreme presidential candidate on immigration; Hispanics and all Americans have heard it loud and clear."

Domenzain pointed in particular to the instances in the Republican primary in which Romney outflanked his opponents to their right. Romney had promised to veto the DREAM Act, and curiously suggested at a GOP presidential debate that his immigration policy involves "self-deportation."

Romney faces a serious deficit among Hispanic voters versus Obama, according to recent polling, a gap that means trouble for the Republican nominee this fall, and possibly spells long-term peril for the party.

That said, Romney has begun softening his language on immigration as he begins pivoting toward the general election. He said he's studying a proposal by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio -- a possible running mate for Romney -- to modify the DREAM Act to allow legal residency, but not citizenship, to illegal immigrants in a narrow set of circumstances.

Complicating matters for the Romney campaign, though, is the Obama campaign's uncontested advantage is Hispanic media. The president's campaign announced a second wave of Spanish-language radio and TV ads (focused on health care reform) on Tuesday.

PEWAUKEE, Wisc. -- The drama facing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took center stage at a GOP dinner here Saturday, where presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and other high profile Republicans – including Walker himself – addressed several hundred activists days before this state’s April 3 primary.

Walker, who faces a recall election on June 5^th, was the center of gravity among a roster of national Republican stars – demonstrating the national import of a battle threatening to pull attention and resources away from the presidential race.

Calling Walker the "anti-Barack Obama," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus cast the recall as a prelude to the Presidential election, declaring, "Anything Scott Walker needs from the RNC, Scott Walker’s going to get from the RNC."

"This is not even just about Scott Walker.  It's not," Priebus said.  "This is about whether or not in this country we can elect people of their word, who clearly lay out their agenda before they’re elected."

But earlier, during his own remarks, Walker conceded he should have won more support for his controversial budget plan, which set in motion a fight over collective bargaining rights for public sector unions.

"Along the way, should I have spent some more time maybe explaining?  Absolutely," Walker said, adding, of his state’s budget crisis, "I bet you a lot of taxpayers would have said, 'Governor, you need to fix this.'"

The remarks were a noticeable act of modesty before a crowd that seemed sympathetic to Walker’s view of the drama that played out at this state’s capital building last year.

"The whole thing is coming to a crescendo.  It’s coming to a crescendo on June the 5^th here in Wisconsin," Rep. Paul Ryan – who endorsed Romney last week – told the crowd here. 

As for the candidates themselves, Romney declared Walker a "hero," and Santorum called for the crowd to support Walker and his Lieutenant Governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, who also faces recall.

"Please continue to lead and defend these two great public officials," Santorum said.