GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Over the past month, Tim Pawlenty's response to questions gauging his interest in being chosen as vice president have ranged from "take my name off the list" to "anybody would be honored to serve if asked."

But speaking to reporters on Saturday after an impassioned address at the North Carolina Republican Convention, the former presidential candidate maintained he is not sending mixed messages.

"I think I can help [Romney] in other ways like this, being a volunteer for his campaign.  But obviously anybody would be honored if asked," Pawlenty said. "But, beyond that, I don't think those two things are inconsistent.  I'm trying to signal that I could best serve him in a different way, but anybody would be honored to serve if asked."

Speaking to more than 1,000 Republicans here in an important swing state, the former Minnesota governor and national co-chair of the Romney campaign showed why he has established himself as one of the GOP nominee's top surrogates.  He drew high praise for his speech urging conservatives to unite in opposition to President Barack Obama.  Many in the crowd said he they found Pawlenty to be an even more impressive speaker than Donald Trump, who took the stage the night before.

Pawlenty acknowledged that he has been able to find a level of comfort now that he had not been able to as a candidate.  Asked what accounted for the change, he said, "I don't know the answer to that, other than that I speak from the heart now, I don't particularly use a script now other than a few notes. I don't have a bunch of handlers telling me what to do and I just let it fly."

He fired up the North Carolina crowd talking about their importance as a swing state, throwing in much of the same speech he used while a candidate, but mixing it with praise for Romney's vision for America.  His message was that it was time for conservatives to come together.

"If we're going to win as a conservative movement, we got to recognize that we're a team," Pawlenty said. "And so when the Vikings or the Hurricanes and other teams go out and practice with each other as teammates, they don't go out and smash each other in the boards or knock each other out when they're practicing as teammates, do they?"

He added, "It's important that we recognize the coalition of conservatives consists of economic conservatives, and social conservatives and tea party conservatives and libertarian conservatives and security and defense conservatives and more.  And no one group can win the swing states or most states by themselves."

One of those team members includes Trump, who in his address the night before again brought up questions about the president's place of birth.  It's the reason some feel the business mogul overshadowed Romney last Tuesday when they held a fundraiser together -- the same day the former Massachusetts governor secured the 1,144 delegates to earn the Republican nomination.

"Donald Trump is trying to do what he can to advance the cause to try to get Mitt Romney elected president. ... So he's a somebody who can get attention, who can bring perspective to issues.  But also, he's part of team and a team needs to work together.  And that doesn't mean that everybody agrees on every issue," Pawlenty said.

Updated 8:50 p.m. — Mitt Romney added to his delegate count on Tuesday by sweeping the first set of primaries since his main Republican rivals have both ended their campaigns.

The presumptive Republican nominee won the primaries in Indiana, West Virginia and North Carolina, according to Associated Press projections. Between those three states, a total of 107 delegates were at stake in Tuesday's primaries.

Follow full primary results here

Romney entered the contests having won 856 of the 1,144 delegates needed to formally secure the nomination. North Carolina awards 52 delegates, allocated proportionally by statewide vote, while Indiana awards three delegates to winner of its nine congressional districts. West Virginia's delegates are all elected directly on the ballot.

These contests were the first since former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dropped his bid for the Republican nomination, and the first since former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's late-night endorsement of Romney on Monday.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul has continued with his campaign, which has involved an additional strategy of picking off delegates in states that delay formal allocation of delegates to candidates.

CRAMERTON, NC –- Newt Gingrich finally admitted Wednesday morning that Mitt Romney will be the Republican Party’s nominee for president this year.

Addressing supporters inside a local diner here following a disappointing second place finish Tuesday night in Delaware's primary, Gingrich went a step closer toward ending his presidential race this morning, after hinting at it last night during his election night speech.

RELATED: Gingrich loses again, signals exit from race

"You have to, at some point, be honest about what's happening in the real world as opposed to what you would like to have happen. Gov. Romney had a very good day yesterday,” he said. “You have to give him some credit. This guy has worked 6 years, put together a big machine and has put together a serious campaign.”

The former House speaker went on to recognize Romney –- the former Massachusetts governor who swept all 5 primaries yesterday –- as the man who will compete against President Obama in the fall.

“I do think it's pretty clear that Gov. Romney is ultimately going to be the nominee and we'll do everything we can to make sure that he is, in fact, effective, and that we as a team are effective both in winning this fall and then, frankly, in governing," Gingrich said to the roughly 75 people in attendance, noting he still believes he would be a better candidate.

Calling himself a “citizen” multiple times inside Georgio’s Restaurant, the speaker vowed to stay involved in the presidential race and admitted he is working out the details of his “transition” this week (although would not define the meaning of his transition when asked by reporters following the event).

"We're going to stay very, very active,” Gingrich promised. “But I am committed to this party. I am committed to defeating Obama. We will find ways to try to be helpful."

Gingrich will continue “campaigning” in the Tar Heel State through Friday before heading back to Washington, D.C. to attend the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday night.

Chris Keane / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney speaks to supporters in Charlotte, North Carolina April 18, 2012.

CHARLOTTE, NC -- Mitt Romney delivered a blistering attack on President Obama's economic record just footsteps from the site where the president will accept his re-election nomination this summer.

On a rooftop a few hundred yards away from the Bank of America stadium, Romney offered his own alternative version of what North Carolinians could expect to hear from the president in his acceptance speech, as well as what they would not.

"What you won’t hear at that convention is that for the last 38 months, unemployment has been above 8 percent, that we’ve had 24 million Americans that are out of work, stopped looking for work, or underemployed," Romney said.

"You won’t hear that, since he gave that speech and became president, that there have been 50,000 more job losses here in North Carolina, more than twice as many as would fit in that stadium," Romney continued, referring to the nearby stadium, the home of the NFL's Carolina Panthers, where the president will speak on the final night of the Democratic convention.

The empty stadium was meant to serve as the backdrop for Romney's speech today -- a visual bracketing of the president -- but was ultimately thwarted by rain that forced the remarks indoors.

Romney focused not just on Obama's planned 2012 convention speech, but also his 2008 remarks, reading aloud from a portion at one point and substituting then nominee-Obama's rebuke of the Bush economy, with his own criticism for the Obama economy, urging the president to take ownership of the economy.

"He can’t continue to try and deflect blame elsewhere," Romney said. "At some point he’s got to acknowledge this is his economy –- that what’s happened is the result of his policies –- not of his predecessors, not of Congress."

He even cracked a joke at the expense of the optics of Obama's acceptance speech, in which the president stood amidst towering Greek columns on the floor of Denver's Invesco field.

"You're not going to see President Obama standing alongside Greek columns. He's not going to want to remind anybody of Greece," Romney said.

The former Massachusetts governor also said the economy may yet improve before Election Day, but that the president would deserve no credit if it did so.

"Upon being elected president he said if we let him borrow $787 billion he would hold unemployment below eight percent, and it has not been below eight percent since," Romney said. "Now its going to get below 8 percent someday. Our economy always come back, comes back -- but it's no thanks to the policies of Barack Obama."

The presumptive GOP nominee also predicted that, despite the presence of the Democratic convention in the state, and the president's current organizational edge here, Romney would return the Tarheel State to the Republican column in 2012.

"The president’s going to do everything he can to get North Carolina in his column, and that will not be enough because we’re gonna win North Carolina in November," Romney said, to cheers.

In a nod to recent polling that continues to show Obama's personal favorability ratings greatly outpacing his own, Romney also argued that liking the president alone was not reason enough to vote for him.

"Even if you like Barack Obama, we can't afford Barack Obama," Romney said.

DOVER, DE -- Given the opportunity to work in Mitt Romney’s cabinet, Newt Gingrich says he would pass.

Asked by a radio host inside a small diner whether he would work for a Romney administration if given the opportunity, Gingrich answered “probably not” but “not because I am opposed to Mitt.”

“Look, if the choice does end up being Romney versus Obama, I can be very, very enthusiastic for Romney, that is a huge choice. But I had a very good life doing a lot of fun things,” the former House speaker said. “I am very happy to be an adviser. I did a lot of that in the Bush administration both on health care and national security.”

Romney seems to have all but sealed the nomination – he still has not reached the 1,144 delegate count threshold – but Gingrich says he has more explaining to do.

“I’m making the case for a very ideas-oriented, solutions-oriented kind of conservatism, and I think Romney is going to have to explain a lot more of what he would actually do as president,” he said.

Gingrich also leveled sharp charges toward President Obama as well at the Hollywood Diner, where he was interviewed on Elliott in the Morning radio show.

“The thing that Obama does that’s fascinating is,” Gingrich said. “On one hand he has all the instincts of a Chicago machine politician. On the other hand he has all the fantasies of a good college faculty member.”

And the media was mixed in as well – an institution Gingrich claims is Obama’s “enabler.”

“The elite news media gets up every morning thinking how do we protect this guy because he’s so wonderful that even if he’s totally destructive he’s destructive in such a fun way that we really like keeping here there, and how do we protect him from himself, because after all it’s not his fault that he’s crippling the economy, bankrupting the nation, and doing a series of weird things, because we know he really means well,” he said.

Gingrich will continue to campaigning heavily in both Delaware, where voters take to the polls on April 24, and North Carolina, votes on May 8, because he believes wins there may get him back in the game – keeping alive the dream of debating Obama one-on-one this fall.

NORTH CAROLINA: NC-7 is heating up with an ad is up for Ilario Pantano hitting Republican David Rouzer on immigration and lobbying. Rouzer is considered the favorite. The ad is running in the Wilmington market.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Religion News Service looks at the waning political influence of the Christian college Bob Jones University, which until the last decade had a ban on interracial dating, under its new president, Stephen Jones, the son of Bob Jones III. “In 2008, [Stephen Jones] told a local newspaper, ‘I don't think I have a political bone in my body.’ That same year, Stephen Jones had the university apologize for banning interracial dating.