WATERFORD, Mich. -- Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty laughed off "lame" questions Thursday about whether he'd be interested in a cabinet position in a Mitt Romney administration if he isn't selected as the GOP's vice presidential candidate.

"It would be presumptuous and premature for people to be talking about positions down the road," he told reporters at a cabinetry store outside of Detroit, poking at the press for the pun on "cabinets."

"And for me I'm just happy to help [Gov. Romney] as a volunteer. I'm happy to be working in the private sector and on other projects, so beyond that I don't have any plans," he added.

Pawlenty, who is widely discussed as being a possible partner for Romney on the GOP ticket, appeared in eastern Michigan as part of a fundraising tour on the GOP nominee's behalf. As a former governor who no longer serves in elected office or has a professional post other than his membership on a bevy of business boards, he would be a prime candidate for a job in Romney's administration should he be passed over for the No. 2 slot.

In addition to a peppering of questions from reporters eager to match his schedule with a possible secret veep rollout, he fielded inquiries about the Romney campaign's new television advertisements.

Asked about a new ad that links President Obama's contraception coverage policy with a "war on religion," Pawlenty pointed to Romney's past comment that available contraceptives are "working just fine."

"I think Gov. Romney said it best in one of the televised debates when he said contraceptives are working fine and we should leave them alone," he said, referencing  January debate in New Hampshire. "And to his point on religious liberties he was referring to the fact that the Obama administration has imposed new limitations on the exercise of religion and has offended the many leaders of the Catholic church and other faith leaders in that regard."

Touring the cabinetry facility with owners Rik and Mike Kowall, the former Minnesota governor munched on donuts and chatted about the impact of economic uncertainty on small businesses.

"Who decides what music you play?" he joked with one employee as Dire Straits' hit "Money for Nothing" blared in the workroom.

Pawlenty is expected to travel to New Hampshire for a busy slate of public events on Saturday.

Republicans are beginning to look with trepidation at the Obama campaign’s all-out effort to turn Mitt Romney’s business experience into a political liability, particularly in corners of the country that could decide the November election.

President Barack Obama’s team has relentlessly blanketed the airwaves in specific states – like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – looking to prime swing voters who might be susceptible to fret over suggestions that Romney had contributed to the growth in outsourcing jobs overseas during his time at Bain Capital. 

Republicans, including Romney, dismiss the ads as a distortion and a distraction from the president’s own record on the economy. But some in the GOP worry these attacks could take their toll and prove effective unless action is taken.

Charles Dharapak / AP

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's business experience may become a political liability in the November election.

“As a baseless charge, this is something that can potentially be dispelled,” said former Pennsylvania Rep. Phil English, a Republican who represented the blue collar town of Erie. “But if the Romney campaign does not aggressively engage it and address it directly, I think they could suffer, potentially, a significant loss of voters.”

The Obama campaign’s line of attack versus Romney found its origin in the Republican primary, when Romney’s opponents charged him with perpetuating “vulture capitalism” during his time at Bain Capital. They pushed him to release years’ worth of tax returns, which the Obama campaign is now demanding as well.

Video: First Read Minute: Two key battlegrounds

Though the Obama campaign endured a measure of friendly fire from Democrats (who questioned the wisdom of attacking Romney’s private sector career) since it revived these attacks for the general election campaign, they largely haven’t let up in their scrutiny of Romney’s Bain record.

"Outsourcing versus insourcing. It matters," one of the Obama campaign's ads says, flashing pictures of Romney and Obama, respectively.

They were handed an additional piece of ammunition by a Washington Post article labeling Bain a “pioneer” in the practice of outsourcing while Romney was in charge. The Obama campaign has spent millions on advertising trumpeting that claim, disregarding the nonpartisan group FactCheck.org’s research that the underlying assertion was untrue.

“This is not dissimilar to the stuff Sherrod Brown ran against me in '06, but the difference is the climate,” said Mike DeWine, the former Republican senator from Ohio who lost his bid for re-election in the 2006 Democratic wave election.

DeWine, who now serves as Ohio’s attorney general, switched his support from Romney to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum during the GOP presidential primary, partly because he felt that Santorum would do a better job connecting with middle class voters.

“I don't know who's going to win, but this year is not '06,” he continued. “It remains to be seen whether they work in '12 or not.”

There are signs, though, that the Obama campaign’s attacks have had an effect. Forty-two percent of registered voters in a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday said they think Romney’s work as a corporate investor did more to cut jobs, versus 36 percent who said it was more directed toward creating jobs.

Recommended: First Thoughts: The importance of Colorado and Iowa

Strikingly, the poll also found that twice as many voters in swing states said that Romney’s business career was a major reason to oppose him than those who said it’s a major reason to support.

Republicans originally found success in using this line of attack versus Romney as recently as this year. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry pummeled Romney over his business record and personal wealth leading into the South Carolina primary, contributing, in part, to Romney’s loss in that contest.

Katon Dawson, a longtime figure in South Carolina Republican politics who spearheaded Perry’s campaign there, said he didn’t expect Obama to find much success in using this tactic.

“If it didn't stick in the Republican primary, it's not going to work in the general,” he said. “There's no way they're going to blame Mitt Romney for a member of their family being out of work.”

English said he distinguished between the attacks on Romney’s wealth and personal background from the Obama campaign’s claims about outsourcing. The latter, he said, had the potential to be much more potent in pivotal Midwestern states.

“I think you have to answer ads with ads,” he said. “There’s a tendency by Republicans to assume the truth will catch up. I think there is a naive quality to Republican thinking that they don't have to answer these charges.”

“I think the rule in politics is to be on offense, and he’s got to be on offense, not defense,” DeWine said.

Republicans are quick to note, too, that Romney has plenty of time to do just that. They praise Romney’s organization and the tenacity of the candidate himself. DeWine noted that most Ohioans have been more tuned into the Fourth of July and recent weather than the presidential election. And Dawson said that conservatives are more mobilized behind Romney than ever, after the Supreme Court issued its decision upholding the president’s health care reform law.

But the president’s own bus tour last week provided some clues about where Team Obama thinks the election could be won or lost. The stops through northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania cut through many of the areas where economic anxiety is near its peak; these areas were among the hardest hit by the downturn in manufacturing, and the loss of jobs to overseas labor.

“They're going after the swing voter,” Dawson said of the Obama campaign’s strategy. “This game is going to be played out among 9-12 million people in the places that put Republicans back in charge in 2010.”

That sentiment underscores a reality that the Obama campaign has tailored its attacks against Romney to both play to voters they desperately need to win, while also exploiting what they think to be a vulnerability of Romney’s.

“Every candidate has strengths and weaknesses, and if it were another candidate, I guess Democrats would be doing something else,” said DeWine.

FRANKENMUTH, MI -- Returning to the state where he was raised and which propelled his turnaround in the Republican primary, an enthusiastic Mitt Romney declared Tuesday: "I'm going to win Michigan with your help!"

Energetic (and clearly enjoying himself despite the June heat) the presumptive Republican presidential nominee predicted victory in a typically Democratic Midwestern state for the second day in a row, following his projection on Monday that he'd win Wisconsin.

"I grew up in Michigan as you know, born and raised here and if I'm lucky enough to become president I'll be the first president in American history to be born in Michigan," Romney said to cheers. "And I won't forget Frankenmuth, I won't forget Michigan, I won't forget how much I owe to this great state to the people here, I love this state. It's a beautiful place and it's got terrific people."

Bouyed by a warm reception from the crowd here, punctuated by chants of "Go Mitt Go," and the notable absence of protestors for one of the first times on his six-state bus tour, Romney might be forgiven his optimism thanks in part to family history here, which he and his wife gleefully put on display this morning.

"I can't believe it. We're in Michigan. Yay!" Mrs. Romney exclaimed. "People don't know how wonderful it is to be from Michigan."

The Romneys certainly appreciate Michigan's wonder -- the candidate famously jokes that the trees in the state are the "right height."

Mitt Romney's father was a popular two-term governor here, and his squeaker win over Rick Santorum in his birth state helped put the primary election away for good. But Democrats have carried Michigan in every election since 1988, and President Obama won the state by a stout 17 points in 2008.

Romney's advisers remain confident of their ability to challenge Obama here, however, noting the power of Romney's last name -- Michiganders are used to voting for a Romney, one top adviser explained -- and the success of the state's popular Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, whose "tough nerd" persona and fiscal focus has shown the state a brand of Republicanism they can embrace.

But Romney faces significant challenges here as well, including his opposition to the president's bailout of Detroit automakers. During the primary campaign, Romney regularly mentioned his opposition and said Obama ultimately resorted to a managed bankruptcy for the automakers, which Romney claims was his plan all along. Today, he did not mention the bailout at all.

Instead, Romney made mention of free trade as a lever with which to prop up the auto industry.

"If I'm president, I want  to open up new markets for American goods, make sure that places that won't take our cars, they finally knock down those regulations to let our products go in there" Romney said. 

Evan Vucci / AP

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gestures during a campaign stop at Production Products, Thursday, June 7, 2012, in St. Louis, Mo.

The trees may be the right height after all.

An EPIC/MRA poll out today shows Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in a statistical tie in Michigan, with Romney edging the president 46-45 percent.

The numbers are a reversal from April when the same poll had Obama up 47-43 percent.

"EPIC co-founder John Cavanagh said the softening in support for Obama is likely related to a robust TV advertising campaign by pro-Romney PACs which have been critical of his handling of the economy," the Detroit Free Press writes.

Conservative outside groups have spent a combined total of $3.4 million so far in Michigan.

The Obama and Romney campaigns have spent nothing. All that's been spent there on the Democratic side is $10,000 from Priorities USA.

LANSING, MI -- Mitt Romney made one of his most direct efforts to date to pivot to the general election, framing President Obama as an "old-school" liberal in a bid to court independent voters.

Back in his home state of Michigan, the state where Romney's primary win allowed him to begin putting away his Republican challengers in the battle for the Republican nod, the presumptive nominee cast Obama as even further to the left than Bill Clinton, the previous Democratic president who'd achieved political success by courting the center.

"President Obama chose to apply liberal ideas of the past to a 21st century America. Liberal policies didn't work back then, they haven't worked during these last four years, and they will not work in the future," Romney told an audience of several hundred at a community college here in Lansing. "New Democrats had abandoned those policies, but President Obama resurrected them, with predictable results."

The rhetoric was part of an effort by Romney to lay claim to independent voters as his general election effort begins to hit its stride. The former governor sought to accomplish that task, in part, by invoking Clinton -- one of the country's most popular politicians whose political standing has only improved since leaving office.

Recapturing Clinton's winning 1992 coalition -- which included women, suburban voters, moderates and independents -- could be critical for Romney if he wants to repeat Clinton's difficult feat of unseating an incumbent president, and of winning here in his home state of Michigan, which last went Republican in a presidential race in 1988.

"President Clinton, remember, he said the era of big government was over. President Obama brought it back with a vengeance," Romney continued. "President Clinton made efforts to reform welfare as we know it. President Obama is trying to tirelessly expand the welfare state, with promises and more programs, more benefits, and more spending."

The Obama campaign fired back, reminding Michiganders of Romney's push for a bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler (Romney didn't mention autos in his speech), and invoking Clinton for their own purposes.

"Now he wants to bring back budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and letting Wall Street write its own rules—policies that President Clinton compared to the failed economic policies that created the crisis, but ‘on steroids,'" Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith said of Romney. "The American people won’t be fooled -- they know that this is the same economic scheme that crashed our economy and punished the middle class in the first place.”

Romney also touted his own biography as proof of his ability to guide the U.S. through a changing world in addition to his efforts to portray the president as a liberal.

Romney, who has long battle GOP and Democratic foes alike over characterizations of his business career, spun his time in private equity and management consulting as a career "at the leading edge of change and dynamism."

"Finding solutions and opportunities in an environment of change and turbulence is what I learned during my career and it’s something I want desperately to bring to the presidency. We can’t look backward," Romney said. "We have to look for those opportunities in a changing world. This is a time for new answers, new ideas and a new direction.”

And to sell his own forward-looking agenda, Romney assailed the Obama campaign's latest tech-savvy tool -- the online "Julia" game simulating a life's worth of effects on a woman -- as a model for government-guided life.

"Old-school liberals envisioned government guiding and providing every need of every citizen. Government would be at the center, the most important player in our lives. Have you seen by the way the president’s vision for the future?" Romney asked.

"To help us see it, his campaign has even created a little fictional character. It's on the website, living an imaginary life filled with happy milestones for which she will spend the rest of her days thanking President Obama. It’s called “The Life of Julia." And it’s a cartoon," Romney said. "By the way what does it say about a president's policies when he has to use a cartoon character rather than real people to justify his record? What does it say about the fiction of old liberalism to insist that good jobs and good schools and good wages will result from policies that have failed us, time and again?"

Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow comfortably leads her Republican challenger who ran a racially-charged ad in his campaign, according to the new NBC News/Marist poll released Wednesday.

Stabenow, a two-term incumbent whom Republicans had believed was vulnerable this cycle in the economically-challenged state, leads former Rep. Pete Hoekstra by 21 points among registered voters, according to the new polling data.

If the election between Stabenow and Hoekstra were held today, 53 percent of registered voters said they would elect Stabenow to a third term, while 32 percent would support Hoekstra. Fifteen percent of Michigan voters said they were undecided.

The numbers, while coming at an early point in the campaign, reflect an uphill climb for Hoekstra, whom Republicans had hoped would offer their best shot to unseat Stabenow. A former committee chairman during his time in Congress, Hoekstra had fallen short in his gubernatorial bid in 2010 after losing in the Republican primary. But the GOP's success as a whole statewide that year had stoked optimism about their chances to beat Stabenow, a senior Senate Democrat and chairwoman of the chamber's agriculture committee.

Hoekstra's disadvantage may well reflect a degree of fallout related to an ad run by his campaign in Michigan on Super Bowl Sunday. The Republican candidate took fire for racial overtones in the ad, which depicts an Asian woman speaking in broken English, facetiously thanking Stabenow for spending policies which, the ad contends, help China.

Hoekstra's campaign, which had initially stood by the ad, has now scrubbed it from its YouTube page and has taken down a related website.

NBC News and Marist also tested a Senate matchup in the border state of Arizona. Republican Rep. Jeff Flake, a darling of fiscal conservatives, leads Democratic challenger Richard Carmona, the former U.S. Surgeon General.

Forty-two percent of registered Arizona voters said they would support Flake if the election were held today, versus 29 percent who would vote for Carmona; 28 percent of Arizonans said they were undecided.

Both Flake and Carmona are running to succeed retiring Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican.

The polls of Arizona and Michigan were each conducted Feb. 19-20, The sample of registered voters in Michigan has a 1.8 percent margin of error, and the sample of Arizona registered voters has a 2 percent margin of error.

Mitt Romney is getting his money's worth out of Donald Trump's endorsement.

Beginning today, Michiganders will be hearing from "The Donald" in the form of a Robo-call on Mitt Romney's behalf.

On the call, which was previewed to NBC News this morning, Trump slams Rick Santorum as someone who "doesn't know about creating jobs," and is "completely entrenched in the Washington culture."

"I'm tired of Rick Santorum pretending he's some kind of DC outsider," Trump says at the start of the recording.

Trump spokesman Michael Cohen says the call will go out statewide, beginning today, and will go on for several days.

Trump has been active on Romney's behalf over the last week -- taking part in a New York City fundraising effort and doing radio interviews in Michigan and Ohio in which he has praised the former Massachusetts governor and attacked his rivals, but not ruled out his own third party run should Romney fail to win the nomination.

Santorum and Romney are locked in a close battle for Michigan, Romney's home state.

As First Thoughts noted this morning, Michigan primary voters are being bombarded with robo-calls from both campaigns ahead of Tuesday's contest.

"He will win," Trump says of Romney on the call. "You've got to give him a chance."

Mitt Romney said Tuesday that cutting spending slows growth in the economy -- a rhetorical slip more akin to an argument a Democrat might make than a Republican.

Speaking in Shelby Township, MI, the former Massachusetts governor took a question about the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission empaneled by President Obama to address the nation's deficit and debt issues. In his response, he said that addressing taxes and spending issues are essential.

"If you just cut, if all you're thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you'll slow down the economy," he said in part of his response. "So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies."

That sort of comment was sure to raise the eyebrows of fiscal conservatives in the GOP, who have long preached a message of fiscal restraint as a path to economic growth.

"It's hogwash. It confirms yet again that Romney is not a limited government conservative," said Andy Roth, the vice president for government affairs at the fiscally conservative Club for Growth. "The idea that balancing the budget would not help the economy is crazy. If we balanced the budget tomorrow on spending cuts alone, it would be fantastic for the economy."

Romney is set to unveil a new, more detailed economic plan later this week, especially as he works to shore up primary victories in Arizona and his native Michigan.

But he's offered an insight into his thinking by endorsing a previous fiscal plan (the Cut, Cap and Balance plan, which calls for cuts to spending, a cap on the growth of government spending, and a balanced budget amendment) that doesn't necessarily rely on accompanying tax reforms.

The Obama administration has been particularly clear about its view that cutting spending would strangle off any hope of an economic recovery. Jack Lew, the new White House chief of staff made that point in a Feb. 12 appearance on "Meet the Press."

"I think that there's pretty broad agreement that the time for austerity is not today," Lew said. "We need to be on a path where over the next several years we bring our deficit under control. Right now we have a recovery that's taking root and if we were to put in austerity measures right now, it would take the economy in the wrong way."

Romney's comment, if nothing else, would represent a rhetorical departure from the rest of the Republican Party, which has done battle with the Obama administration over the past year about the best course for economic growth.

"We’re listening to the people who sent us here to cut spending so we can grow our economy," House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said just less than a year ago, at the height of a fight between Obama and congressional Republicans over funding the government.

***UPDATE*** Romney spokesman Ryan Williams commented on the comments:

The governor’s point was that simply slashing the budget, with no affirmative pro-growth policies, is insufficient to get the economy turned around.  However, he believes that budget cuts – especially in the context of President Obama’s unprecedented spending explosion – are a step in the right direction.  As he made clear in his economic plan, he believes that spending cuts that reduce the size of government and balance the budget are crucial to economic growth and job creation.

SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Mitt Romney promised on Tuesday to unveil a more specific economic plan later this week, one that that would integrate his views on tax policy, spending and entitlement reform into one complete package.

Romney, who's set to make a major economic address at Ford Field in Detroit on Friday, teased the new plan, which seems aimed at quieting critics who have attacked his economic plan for lacking specificity.

"What I'm going to be doing over the coming days, is I'm going to be talking about how to make all three of those things work together," Romney told a attendees at a town-hall style meeting here some 25 miles north of Detroit.

Romney, who said he laid out the "beginnings" of his ideas in his 2011 book "No Apology," described a platform that would include spending cuts, "flatter, fairer and simpler" taxes that he said would encourage growth, and and specific reforms to entitlements like social security and medicare.

While Romney did not elaborate much beyond that point, he did provide a clue to his thinking in answering a question from a Tea Party supporter, who asked Romney for his views on the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles debt commission which was organized by, then largely abandoned by, President Obama.

"I think very highly of their recommendations, let me start out by saying that," Romney said. "I find it extraordinary that the president of the United States would bring together a group of such esteemed individuals from both sides of the aisle and say to them, how can we balance our budget, and at the same time, how can we create tax policies that encourage growth. Because both are important. If you just cut, if all you're thinking about doing is cutting spending, why, as you cut spending you'll slow down the economy. So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies. And so the Simpson-Bowles Commission attempted to do that in their own way."

"I'm not endorsing every single aspect of their proposals, but I'll be coming out with some proposals of my own this week that describe how I'd cut, [and] how I'll create more pro-growth tax policies," Romney added, standing in front of a giant sign reading "Cut the Spending."

For Romney, who has long said he favors elements of Simpson-Bowles, a full embrace of the commission's recommendations would be complicated. Simpson-Bowles proposed a roughly three-to-one ratio of spending cuts to tax increases. Romney, along with every other GOP candidate, said they would reject even a ten-to-one cuts versus tax increases plan at a debate in August.

Still, a more robust plan, well sold, from Romney might quiet critics who have said his economic ideas presented thus far lacked specifics and bold reforms, and could help improve his fortunes in the host of contests on the horizon for Super Tuesday.

Today, in his only public event of the day, Romney went back to basics stylistically, holding only his second town hall style event since South Carolina. He fielded a host of questions on topics as varied as selecting justices for the Supreme Court (Romney labeled himself a strict constructionist on judges, and pointed to Roberts, Alito and Scalia as his kind of appointees), to the Federal Reserve (audit it), to Rick Santorum (hasn't been vetted, not a fiscal conservative.)

In an only-in-Michigan touch, attendees munched on paczki, a Polish Fat Tuesday treat, during Romney's introduction. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Romney co-chair here, looked to set expectations low for the former Massachusetts governor's home state, labeling Romney the "comeback kid," and referring to the on-again-off-again frontrunner as an "underdog" here -- twice.