TAMPA, Fla. – Arizona Sen. John McCain expressed concern Sunday that further weather-related cancellations of the Republican National Convention here could deprive the GOP of an opportunity to make its case to voters.

Speaking Sunday on “Meet the Press,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee said that the decision by convention organizers to effectively cancel Monday’s session due to the effects of the impending Hurricane Isaac wouldn’t have much harm on Republicans.

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. attends a news conference about the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Thursday, July 12, 2012, on Capitol Hill.

“It's Wednesday, Thursday night that are the big moments,” he said. “It's not that we don't want that first night, but I don't think it will be harmful if we lose the first night.”

But, the veteran senator added: “It could be harmful if we lose more than that.”

Recommended: Hurricane impending, Republicans cancel first day of convention

Republicans announced on Saturday that they had decided to delay the beginning of the convention until Tuesday; the impending storm threatens logistics and safety problems that made it unfeasible to convene for Monday’s activities.

But convention organizers haven’t yet released the revised schedule, and haven’t officially foreclosed the possibility of further weather-related changes to the schedule bleeding into Tuesday.

Related: GOP elders describe high stakes for Romney in Tampa

As things stand, Ann Romney and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are scheduled to be featured speakers on Tuesday evening. Mitt Romney won’t speak until Thursday, though the formal roll call vote to nominate him for president is currently scheduled for Tuesday.

TAMPA, Fla. -- South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) called on government contractors to put employees on layoff notice before November's election as a way to pressure Congress to address the so-called "fiscal cliff."

Graham, joined by Republican Sens. John McCain (AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (NH), were in Florida for their first stop on a  two-day, four-state tour by these three members of the Senate Armed Services Committee designed to bring attention to the $500 billion in automatic cuts scheduled to begin in January if Congress does not find other ways to cut spending.

“Politicians, you know, quite frankly respond to pressure,” Graham said about the  cuts set to begin in 2013 under the so-called sequestration budget.

“I’m urging every defense industry that could be affected by sequestration to put your employees on notice before November,” he continued. “The more it becomes real to us as to what comes the nation’s way, the more likely we are to solve the problem.”

Graham delivered the remarks inside a University of South Florida auditorium here in Tampa this morning to an audience of military veterans, academics, and defense contractors.

Some in the audience were linked to nearby MacDill Air Force base, a sprawling installation housing the U.S. Central Command, the organization that oversees America’s military activity in the Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There is gridlock in Washington,” McCain said as he warmed the crowd shortly after taking the podium. “I don’t need to tell you that.  It’s hard these days, trying to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan.”

The line won laughs, but much of the humor today was strictly of the gallows variety.

Before the event began, audience members mingled and expressed satisfaction that South Florida’s defense industry was being recognized.

“I think they’re playing politics with peoples’ lives,” Donna S. Huneycutt, the executive vice president of a small government consulting firm, said of Congress in an interview. 

Huneycutt said she has a staff of 62 people, and nearly had to lay people off last year as a result of earlier budget cuts.

“I’d like to see both sides come to the table and compromise,” she said.

McCain, Graham, and Ayotte called for a bipartisan solution to the crisis.

They signaled they would break with other Republicans and would accept closing loopholes in the tax code in return for concessions from Democrats, including cuts to entitlement programs.

“We shouldn’t put our troops in this position,” Ayotte said. “We shouldn’t put our military feeling like they have the sword of Damocles hanging over their head.”

Ayotte, the wife of a retired Air National Guard pilot who flew combat missions over Iraq, is a buzzed-about prospect for the number-two slot on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s ticket and is rumored to be on his short list.

The town hall tour was scheduled to make stops later today in Fayetteville, NC and Norfolk, VA – also home to key military communities.

The tour will wrap Tuesday morning in Merrimack, NH at a facility for the defense contractor BAE Systems.

Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) offered a personal and passionate defense of top State Department aide Huma Abedin in the face of conservative allegations that she is using her position in "unduly influencing" foreign policy in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood.

McCain called allegations that Abedin has ties through her family to the Muslim Brotherhood "sinister" in a rare speech on the Senate floor taking fellow Republicans to task.

"Rarely do I come to the floor of this institution to discuss particular individuals. But I understand how painful and injurious it is when a person's character, reputation, and patriotism are attacked without concern for fact or fairness," McCain opened.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (R), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, led four other Republican lawmakers in writing a letter last month requesting that the State Department investigate whether Abedin, who is Muslim, has any ties through her family to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political group that found success in recent Egyptian elections.

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Bachmann has expressed concerns about how Abedin, who is married to former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner (D), was able to obtain a security clearance.

McCain condemned these accusations as unsubstantiated.

"These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma's family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way," he said. "These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis, and no merit. And they need to stop now."

McCain called Abedin a "friend" who is an "intelligent, upstanding, hard-working and long servant of our country and our government."

"Put simply, Huma represents what is best about America: the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully," he added.

McCain picked apart the rationale of Bachmann and her colleagues, who wrote their June letter based on a report "The Muslim Brotherhood in America," produced by the Center for Security Policy.

"The letter alleges that three members of Huma's family are 'connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.' Never mind that one of those individuals, Huma's father, passed away two decades ago. The letter and the report offer not one instance of an action, a decision, or a public position that Huma has taken while at the State Department that would lend credence to the charge that she is promoting anti-American activities within our government."

McCain has spent time traveling with Abedin while she served as a personal aide to Hillary Clinton during Clinton's time as a senator from New York.

He ended his floor speech with a strong show of support. "I have every confidence in Huma's loyalty to our country, and everyone else should as well."

A group of Republican senators led by Arizona Sen. John McCain sought to stir up outrage on Tuesday in hopes of having a special counsel named to investigate classified intelligence leaks from the Obama administration.

"Where is the outrage?" the senators asked at a press conference on Capitol Hill.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

From left, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, take turns at the microphones to assert their belief that President Obama's administration has orchestrated disclosure of classified information for political gain, during a news conference on Capitol Hill.

"We need a special counsel.  We need someone who the American people can trust, and we need to stop the leaks that are endangering the lives of those men and women who are serving our country with valor our courage. And they deserve a lot better," McCain told reporters.

McCain read excerpts of David Sanger's book that, he said, indicated senior Obama administration officials had publicly discussed classified information. He pointed to a meeting Sanger had in the presidential suite at the G20 in Pittsburgh in 2009 where officials shared intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.

"How does a person be brought up to the presidential suite and be briefed by quote 'national security personnel' unless they are at the highest level?" he asked.

McCain said the professional, non-political intelligence officers he has spoken with are "distraught" and "outraged" by the leaks.

The senators said at issue are reports about the NAVY Seal raid on Osama bin Laden, U.S. missions in Pakistan, the outinf of a Yemeni double agent and details of a cyberwar against Iran and the U.S. drone program.

McCain called the new rules to stop leaks announced by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper yesterday "important," but not enough.

The ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, said the president needs to step up his concern.

"What the president ought to be saying is, this is very damaging to the country and we're going to do everything we can to get to the bottom of it," he said.

He warned: "Is it going to take one of our sources not just having his life put in danger but being injured, who knows what else may happen to somebody out there now, before this administration gets serious about this and does get outraged? ... What's it going to take to get this administration outraged about this?"

"where is the outrage in this administration?" added Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker (R). "Where is there any indication that within the Obama administration officials are outraged at the criminal leaks of classified information that put our agents and our friends at risk?"

The senators are calling for a special prosecutor because they say it is nearly impossible to have an independent investigation of the leaks by U.S. attorneys who report to Attorney General Eric Holder.

"Now do we really think in spite of the capability of these two US attorneys that when you have somebody who is appointed by the administration, are they really going to be unbiased in their investigation of the administration that appointed them?" Chambliss asked.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who has clashed publicly with Holder, calling for his resignation at a Senate hearing earlier this month, said "this administration cannot be trusted to investigate itself."

Cornyn said a congressional investigation may be necessary. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has expressed support for the U.S. attorney’s investigation. She said she does not believe a special prosecutor is necessary and would take too much time.

Updated 12:35 p.m. -- Democrats and Republicans each found something to cheer in the Supreme Court's ruling Monday on Arizona's controversial immigration law, reflecting the delicate politics surrounding immigration and the court's own mixed decision.

Each party found something to like and dislike in the Supreme Court's opinion, which struck down most components of the Arizona law but left in place one of its most controversial provisions: the requirement that authorities check the immigration status of anyone they detain who's reasonably suspected of being in the United States illegally.

President Obama said he was "pleased" the court had struck down key provisions of the law, while his likely Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, suggested the decision represented a rebuke of the president.

"What this decision makes unmistakably clear is that Congress must act on comprehensive immigration reform. A patchwork of state laws is not a solution to our broken immigration system -– it’s part of the problem," Obama said. "At the same time, I remain concerned about the practical impact of the remaining provision of the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they even suspect to be here illegally."

Romney, meanwhile, emphasized what he said were the president's own struggles to curb illegal immigration.

"Today's decision underscores the need for a president who will lead on this critical issue and work in a bipartisan fashion to pursue a national immigration strategy," presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney said in a written statement.

Yuri Gripas / Reuters

People protest against President Obama's health care reform in front of U.S. Supreme Court in Washington June 25.

But Romney didn't address the components of the law that were thrown out or, alternatively, upheld by the court.

"I believe that each state has the duty -- and the right -- to secure our borders and preserve the rule of law, particularly when the federal government has failed to meet its responsibilities," he said.

Both Obama and Romney's responses were emblematic of the mixed reactions prompted by the decision across the political spectrum.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the decision marked a vindication of the Obama administration's initial decision to challenge the Arizona law. Critics in the Democratic Party said that the law, including the prong that the Supreme Court upheld, would open the door to racial profiling.

"This is as strong a repudiation of the Arizona law as one could expect given that the law has not been implemented yet," said New York Sen. Charles Schumer (D). "Three linchpins of the Arizona law were struck down by a convincing majority of the Court as clearly violating federal law, and a fourth is on thin legal ice."

But Republicans found just as much to cheer in the court's ruling.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who first championed the law, called the decision "a victory for the rule of law."

While many elements of the law were struck down, the court upheld what Brewer called the "heart" of the law -- a requirement that authorities check the immigration status of anyone whom they suspect of being in the United States illegally.

The state's two Republican senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain, also cheered the court for appearing to validate the status-check portion of the Arizona law.

The president will participate a series of public events set Monday in New England; as a matter of coincidence, Romney is in Arizona today to attend fundraisers.

The issue of immigration has assumed broader political significance in the 2012 campaign, following the president's announcement earlier this month that his administration would cease deporting illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and would instead allow them to apply for temporary work visas. This shift, which achieved many of the intentions of a Republican version of the DREAM Act, was poised to mobilize Latino voters behind the president, who had otherwise fallen short on delivering on his promise of comprehensive immigration reform.

The administration's announcement also threatened to exacerbate Romney's gap against Obama among Latino voters, a growing bloc that could prove especially decisive in swing states like Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and beyond. An early May oversample of Latino voters in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 22 percent of Latinos had a positive opinion of the GOP, versus 50 percent who expressed a negative impression of the Republican Party.

Romney responded to the new immigration policy by promising to supersede it with his own "long-term" plan on immigration. But he hasn't specified how his plan would work, or what it would differ in practical terms from the Obama plan.

The former Massachusetts governor has wrestled with immigration as an issue writ large, but has also struggled with positioning himself on the Arizona law.

Romney called the Arizona law a "model" at a debate this February, though his campaign insisted Romney only meant that in terms of some of the employment parts of the law (which the Supreme Court threw out on Monday). The Romney campaign was also forced to distance itself from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), one of the principal authors of the Arizona law and another tough immigration law in Alabama.

But Romney also said at the same debate that "the right course for America is to drop these lawsuits against Arizona and other states" in addition to more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws.

Romney had used immigration to pummel some of his opponents in the Republican primary from the right, making his pivot toward the general election even more difficult.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Some of Mitt Romney's most deep-pocketed donors will flock to Utah for an exclusive gathering this weekend featuring top Republican political figures and strategists.

More than 100 of the GOP's top fundraisers and bundlers will attend the "First National Romney Victory Leadership Retreat," a weekend-long retreat intended to rally, educate and reward the men and women who have been the primary financial backers of the presumptive nominee's campaign thus far.

The attendees will be treated to presentations, briefing and panel discussions featuring an all-star cast of Republican politicians, including several thought to be among Romney's top vice presidential choices.

Among the possible VP contenders a Romney campaign adviser confirmed would be in attendance are former Govs. Tim Pawlenty (MN) and Jeb Bush (FL), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The GOP's last presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, will also attend, according to Republican sources familiar with the event's schedule.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will speak at one of the weekend's two major dinners, according to a McDonnell staffer.

The Washington Post has reported that Sen. John Thune, Rep. Paul Ryan -- two other rumored VP short-listers will attend, as will Republican power-broker Karl Rove. NBC News has not independently confirmed this information.

"All the major players of the party will be there," Dallas businessman Ray Washburne, who will attend the retreat, told NBC News. "Its kind of a reunion of all the people who worked hard on the campaign so far."

Washburne is indicative of the type of Republican rainmaker the Romney campaign intends to woo, and reward, at the retreat. The real estate developer, investor and restauranteur headed up a recent Romney fundraiser in Dallas that brought in $3.6 million for the campaign, and has co-chaired Romney's fundraising effort in the Lone Star state after the first candidate he supported -- Pawlenty -- dropped out of the race.

The invitees are primarily those donors who have raised enough money to qualify as national finance committee members, one Romney adviser said.

"The party is all falling in behind the candidate now, and this is kind of the first kind of anointment of Mitt by everyone," Washburne said.

On Saturday, attendees will be briefed by top Romney campaign officials, including political director Rich Beeson, and the famously media-averse campaign manager Matt Rhodes, on the state of the campaign and strategy going forward. That night they will also attend the second of two dinners with the candidate himself.

Attendees at the weekend-long retreat will at gather at a resort hotel in the mountains surrounding Salt Lake city, not far from where Romney first rose to prominence by running the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, and in the state where he still retains a rock star-like political status.

Romney and his guests will be far from the prying eyes of most media. The entire three-day conference is closed to the press, and Romney has no public events in Utah to draw reporters here otherwise. His campaign has refused most official requests for comment on the conference, including several made for this report.

When the conference concludes at the end of the weekend, the campaign will continue with one major question -- likely to be discussed all weekend -- that will remain unanswered: Was the vice presidential nominee among those in attendance?

"That's all anybody wants to know," Washburne said.

NBC's Alex Moe contributed.

Although the Latino vote could very well decide the upcoming presidential election, Hispanics no longer make up the fastest-growing immigrant group in the United States.

That honor instead goes to immigrants from Asia, according to a new study by the Pew Research Institute.

The study shows that, from 2000-2010, the annual arrival of Hispanic immigrants declined from 59% of all immigrants to 31%, while Asian immigrants increased from 19% to 36%.

Overall, the Asian-American population in America reached a record 18.2 million in 2011, bringing the demographic to 5.8% of the U.S. population -- a surge from 1% in 1965.

By comparison, however, there are 52 million Latinos in the U.S., or 16% of the population.

Politically, Asian Americans in the U.S. tend to vote Democratic. According to Pew, half of them are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party; only 28% identify as Republicans.

Asian Americans also view President Obama in a more favorable light, with a 54% approving of his job versus 44% for the general public who do. According to 2008 Election Day exit polls, Asian Americans supported Obama over John McCain by a 62%-35% margin.

On a broader political ideology scale, 55% of Asian Americans prefer a larger government with more services, while only 36% support a smaller government. Those numbers for the general populace are essentially reversed, with 52% supporting small government and 39% favoring bigger government.

When it comes to social issues, Asian Americans support same-sex marriage by a 53%-35% margin, and 54% believe abortion should be legal (versus 37% who say it should be illegal).

But how important will the Asian-American vote be in 2012, especially in key battleground states? The Asian-American populations in Nevada and Virginia are 6.2% and 4.9%, respectively, according to the U.S. Census Bureau data.

The populations in Florida and North Carolina, however, are much smaller, making up only 2% in each state. The states where Asian-Americans mostly reside are (in order) Hawaii, California, New Jersey, and New York.

Arizona Sen. John McCain predicted a renewed effort of reform the nation's campaign finance laws as an outgrowth of the unrestrained influx of donations in this year's presidential campaign. 

The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, which struck down many of the restrictions on political spending and spurred the advent of so-called "super PACs," was one of the worst in modern history, McCain said. 

"I think there will be scandals as associated with the worst decision of the Supreme Court in the 21st Century — uninformed, arrogant, naive," McCain said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"The fact is that the system is broken," he later added. "I predict to you that there will be scandals, and I predict to you that there will be reform again."

McCain has long been an advocate of campaign finance reform; a landmark 2002 campaign finance law bearing his name was the subject of the legal challenge that led to the Citizens United ruling. 

That decision did away with many of the limits on the magnitude of political contributions, fueling an inflation in the cost of campaigns, particularly on the federal level. Super PACs like American Crossroads, Restore our Future and Priorities USA Action have been able to spend tens of millions of dollars already on the campaign. They're able to cull their support from a handful of wealthy donors, the size of whose report is sometimes clouded by twin nonprofit groups associated with super PACs, which don't have to disclose their donors. 

One of the largest such donors has been Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who gave over $10 million to a super PAC in the primary that supported Newt Gingrich for president. Adelson's since pledged at least $10 million to the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future. 

McCain fretted earlier this week that Adelson's contributions would be tantamount to "foreign money" entering the campaign, since Adelson's fortune is built in part by revenues from overseas casinos. 

McCain said on Sunday that he's worried about Adelson's influence, but no more so than the influence of organized labor spending or other donors' impact on the campaign.

"Not any more than other people who will give lots of money; not any more than the trade unions, the labor unions have. The whole system's broken, and there's a wash. I don't pick out Mr. Adelson any more than I pick out Mr. Trumka," he said, referring to the AFL-CIO's president.

In an exchange with the Capitol Hill publication The Hill, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he wanted to work with the Obama White House -- on immigration and the line-item veto -- but President Obama and his team never reached out.

“Let’s get real here,” McCain told The Hill. “There was never any outreach from President Obama or anyone in his administration to me.”

McCain disputes the notion that he has rejected entreaties to cooperate with the White House because he is bitter from his defeat four years ago.

He said he expressed eagerness to work with the president on immigration reform and the line-item veto, but has been left out in the cold.

McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, also said Obama failed to consult with him on national-security issues.“He never asked for advice on national-security nominees,” McCain said.

But when looking at the major Senate votes over the past three years, it's hard to find a Democratic-sponsored measure that McCain supported, even ones backed by other GOP senators (including McCain ally Lindsey Graham).

Consider:

On the most significant piece of legislation on immigration -- the topic on which he said he wanted to work with the White House -- McCain voted against the DREAM Act, which would give young illegal immigrants who are pursuing a college degree or serving in the military a chance for citizenship. Three Republicans (Bob Bennett, Dick Lugar and Lisa Murkowski) voted for the legislation that failed to get 60 Senate votes.

Despite voting for every other Supreme Court nominee since joining the Senate, McCain voted against both of Obama's picks, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Notably, Grahman and eight other Republicans voted for Sotomayor, and Graham and four other Republicans voted for Kagan.

McCain also voted against the New START treaty with Russia, even though that was supported by 12 Republican senators; he voted against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which was backed by eight GOPers; and he voted against the financial-reform legislation, supported by three Republicans.

(And as far as the claim that Obama never reached out to McCain, remember there was that inaugural dinner that the then-president-elect hosted in McCain's honor.)

A McCain spokesman tells First Read that McCain didn't vote for those measures because they went against his principles.

"Everyone knows that the president failed to fulfill his promise to reach across the aisle and bridge the partisan divide," spokesman Brian Rogers said. "Sen. McCain was never going to sacrifice his principles to support legislation he fundamentally opposes, but he was willing to work with the president on areas of common concern."

Rogers added, "The president’s outreach has been non-existent –- not just to Sen. McCain, but many Democrats in Congress say the exact same thing."

“For so long, he was the putative front-runner, the nominal front-runner, the weak front-runner. Then he became the all-but-certain nominee. And by Tuesday night, he’ll be able to ditch those modifiers,” the Washington Post writes.  “Willard Mitt Romney is about to do what his father didn’t and no one in his church ever has. With Tuesday’s Texas primary, he is poised to secure the 1,144 delegates required to clinch the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s August convention.”

The AP also notes that Romney is set to clinch the nomination today, and will raise money with Donald Trump, someone he “has declined to repudiate” for his “fringe view” questioning that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States. “Trump again contended this week that Obama was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia, pointing to information in a catalog from a literary agency that represented Obama two decades ago. That view has been debunked repeatedly,” AP notes.

And there’s this: “Now that the issue of the president’s birth certificate has been laid to rest (mostly), some conservatives are turning their attention to a new obsession: Barack Obama's college transcripts,” the L.A. Times notes. “Last week, a website that already had offered a $10,000 reward for Obama's transcripts from Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law School, increased the bounty to $20,000. About a year ago, Donald Trump, among the highest-profile ‘birthers,’ helped get the mini-movement started. After the president released his long-form birth certificate, Trump abruptly changed subjects: ‘The word is, according to what I’ve read,’ said Trump, ‘that he was a terrible student when he went to Occidental. He then gets into Columbia; he then gets to Harvard. ... How do you get into Harvard if you’re not a good student? Now maybe that's right or maybe it’s wrong, but I don't know why he doesn’t release his records.’”

The Boston Globe goes to Utah: “For Mormons, this is a potentially volatile moment. They are deeply proud that their faith’s most prominent adherent, Mitt Romney, is steps away from a presidential nomination and could push the faith further into the mainstream of American life. With these feelings, though, comes a nagging fear that their beliefs, often misunderstood, will again be subjected to scrutiny, even ridicule, on a national scale.”

Romney and John McCain got a crowd of about 5,000 on Memorial Day in San Diego, near his beach home in La Jolla.

On Monday, Memorial Day, Romney promised the world’s strongest military. He said he would maintain a military "with no comparable power anywhere in the world."

“A member of the National Labor Relations Board who was facing scrutiny for allegedly leaking sensitive information to a former adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, is stepping down, the NLRB said Sunday,” USA Today writes.

Republicans moved quickly on Thursday in hopes of distancing themselves from a strategy being weighed by a GOP-oriented super PAC, which threatened to inject racial politics into the 2012 presidential campaign.

Mitt Romney’s campaign, joined by a slew of other GOP heavyweights, sought to disavow a strategy that was presented to Joe Ricketts -- the owner of the Chicago Cubs -- that would call for using a super PAC to launch aggressive attack ads against President Barack Obama. The plan, first reported by the New York Times, called for explicitly linking Obama to a former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose occasionally angry sermons touched on themes of race.

Mary Altaffer / AP

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks to reporters while boarding a charter flight May 17 in Miami, Fla.

"I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they've described," Romney told the conservative blog Townhall.

An earlier statement by Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, said the campaign would repudiate strategies that rely on personal attacks, though Rhoades made no specific reference toward Ricketts. During a gaggle this morning aboard his campaign plane, Romney told reporters that he hadn't seen the story.

Also to Townhall, Romney expressed frustration that no attention is being paid to what he considers a negative campaign by Team Obama.

"It's interesting that we're talking about some Republican PAC that wants to go after the president [on Wright]," he said. "I hope people also are looking at what he's doing, and saying 'why is he running an attack campaign?  Why isn't he talking about his record?'"

First Thoughts: When Willie Horton meets Jeremiah Wright

Romney has only one public campaign appearance today, where he could further address the controversy, but faced immediate blowback from the Obama campaign.

Jim Messina, the manager of the Obama re-election effort, said the report "reflects how far the party has drifted in four short years since John McCain rejected these very tactics," referring to the decision made in the 2008 Republican nominee's high command against attacking Obama along those lines.

"Once again, Gov. Romney has fallen short of the standard that John McCain set, reacting tepidly in a moment that required moral leadership in standing up to the very extreme wing of his own party,” Messina said.

Steve Schmidt, a top aide to McCain’s presidential campaign, said that he was never prouder than when his candidate rejected the tactic. Invoking Wright wasn’t just the wrong thing to do, Schmidt said; it was the wrong strategy.

"Putting aside that this is the totally wrong thing to do for the country, using race as a political wedge releases a poison into the body politic, and it's totally unpredictable how it plays out," he said.

Mark McKinnon, a former aide to President George W. Bush, added of the proposed strategy: "Exhibit A of what is wrong with our politics today."

Romney campaign repudiates -- but punches back, too

The McCain campaign faced pressure to invoke Wright from some of Obama's most vociferous opponents on the right. Reports at the time indicated that, in particular, then-vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was particularly interested in linking Wright to Obama, who had been forced to address his ties to the controversial pastor during his primary fight against Hillary Clinton.

A spokesman for McCain said Thursday in a statement that the senator stands by his decision at that time.

"Senator McCain is very proud of the campaign he ran in 2008," said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the Arizona senator. "He stands by the decisions he made during that race and would make them again today if he had it to do over."

Beyond the McCain campaign's judgment that making such an attack -- which would necessarily invoke race into the campaign against America's first black president -- it was judged to be bad politics.

"Would this have been a politically expedient thing for John McCain? No! Everybody knew who Jeremiah Wright was, and people who were deeply troubled by it were not Barack Obama voters," Schmidt said. "It would have been an utterly ineffective political attack."

The quick Republican backlash, though, reflects the extent to which the Obama campaign might gain traction from even the trial balloon associated with the rumored attack. It might mobilize voters, especially African-Americans, who Obama needs to help fuel his re-election, and could boost fundraising from angry supporters.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., even expressed a degree of amusement at the reported attack emanating from Ricketts, who most recently made a splash in politics by spending late in a Nebraska Senate primary on behalf of Deb Fischer, who eventually won.

"I hope they're as successful with this campaign as the Cubs are in baseball," Pelosi said on Capitol Hill, referring to the team's abysmal record.

Her counterpart, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, opted against condemning or even acknowledging the line of attack during his press conference, telling NBC News that "this election is going to be about the economy."

More broadly, the firestorm that erupted Thursday served as a testament to the outsize importance of super PACs in the 2012 campaign.

The Romney campaign had hoped to push a message about its relative fundraising prowess in April after releasing its figures to reporters early this morning. A new poll yesterday had also showed the former Massachusetts governor in a tie against Obama in Wisconsin, suggesting a narrowing battle for the White House.

"This is a function of the brokenness of the campaign finance system," Schmidt said. "One person's bad judgment -- Ricketts' -- has the potential to consume the dialog in the presidential campaign."

NBC’s Chuck Todd, Peter Alexander and Garrett Haake contributed to this report.