In an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Madden noted that Romney has publicly repudiated the birther myth in the past, and would do it again, but stopped short of saying that the candidate will do it in Trump’s presence.

When Mitchell asked if Romney will “stand up next to Donald Trump and disavow that [myth],” Madden replied, “He’ll stand up next to Donald Trump and he’ll talk about why he wants to be president.” “Any time the subject goes off of that, or if something where ... Governor Romney would disagree, he’s going to make that very clear,” Madden added, without saying whether that clarification would be to Trump’s face or after the event.

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There are two main reasons. It's the first time both major-party candidates are declining post-Watergate federal campaign financing — and the spending limits attached. And the proliferation of super PACS is pumping untold millions into the fray on both sides, mostly for advertising.

So fashion your seat belts and prepare for a howling tempest of broadcast ads, especially if you live in a battleground state.

Obama and Romney were both coming off a week of intensive national fundraising.

Without Democratic primary opposition, Obama had a huge early advantage.

But Romney, likely to surpass the 1,144 delegates needed for the GOP nomination next Tuesday with a primary win in Texas, is starting to catch up as major conservative donors begin opening their wallets.

Through April, Obama and Democratic groups supporting him have raised nearly $450 million and have more than $150 million in the bank. Romney and Republicans backing him have collected more than $400 million during the same stretch and have about $80 million at their disposal.

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Today it's appalling: puffed up by Romney's flattery, the preening, orange-haired narcissist doubled down on his idiotic birther claims against the president, telling the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove: “Look, it’s very simple. A book publisher came out three days ago and said that in his written synopsis of his book, he said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. His mother never spent a day in the hospital.”

If you haven't been following the story, and I tried not to, the addled spawn of Andrew Breitbart found a dusty 20-year-old catalog from Obama's former literary agency that said he was born in Kenya. An assistant quickly said that she wrote down incorrect information. Trump doesn't believe her.

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Bellicose former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, who has been informally advising Romney on foreign policy, was the keynote speaker at a GOP fundraiser in Iowa last night where he pleaded, “Even if you’re not at this moment an enthusiastic supporter of Gov. Romney, will you please get yourself together in the next three or four months?” His inspirational message continued: “He may not have been your perfect candidate, but consider what you will see on the ballot on Nov. 6. This is not a tough decision.” Mitt Romney: Probably Better than the other guy.

In typical Bolton fashion, he also told the Polk County Republicans that a dollar spent on defense is better “than a dollar spent with the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Bolton endorsed Romney in January after forgoing a rumored presidential bid of his own and even though Newt Gingrich promised to make Bolton his secretary of state.

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Asked about whether he likes “the game” of politics, the presumed GOP nominee replied, "I like competition, and I think the game [of politics] is like a sport for old guys. I mean, you know, I can't compete in competitive sports very well, but I can compete in politics, and there's the -- what was the old ABC 'Wide World of Sports' slogan? 'The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.' The only difference is victory is still a thrill, but I don't feel agony in loss."

He continued, “The only time I'm unhappy is if I've done something that hurt the prospects for the success of our effort."

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With our first-ever private equity honcho running for president in an era of high unemployment and slow economic growth, it was always a foregone conclusion that this year's election campaign would include an appraisal of whether Mitt Romney's version of capitalism is good for America. It's a debate the culture has been passionately engaged in at least as far back as Oliver Stone's "Wall Street," and the battle lines are well-drawn. Is Bain Capital a parasitic corporate raider or an engine for lean-and-mean capitalist renewal? You get to make the call, and then you can go vote.

Facebook's botched IPO adds a new wrinkle. In contrast to Bain-style private equity wheeling-and-dealing, the Silicon Valley venture capital model for new firm creation has always enjoyed a much more positive public relations profile. Maybe it's a West Coast vs. East Coast thing, but conjuring up the likes of Intel or Apple or Google from thin air is a lot more sexy than swooping down on a troubled firm, brutally slashing costs and stripping assets, and then reselling for a huge profit a few years down the line.

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There were stories, recently, in the usual places, about how Trump was being seriously considered for a major speech at the Republican Convention. I did not dwell on the story much, because I assumed that these rumors were a product of Donald Trump's prodigious vanity and powerful imagination. Ha ha ha, sure, the Republicans will definitely want the stupid make-believe TV mogul who pretends to fire people for a living, at their big party.

Now that "Celebrity Apprentice" is done, Trump is back to pretending to be a major political player. He just announced his intention to start his own super PAC, because he is a weird attention-hungry idiot with a bit of money to burn (though not as much money to burn as he would like you to think he has to burn).

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Our hero, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, has just finished taking down the Psychlo empire, which has ruled Earth for the past millennium and has dominated most of the known 16 universes for going on 300,000 years. Now Jonnie has to negotiate with the alien powers who are jockeying to fill the power vacuum left behind, and things aren’t looking so good for the human race.

Homo sapiens seem destined to suffer one of the more common fates of common folk after the end of totalitarian rule — war, chaos and brutal, if less total, exploitation at the hands of tyrants, oligarchs, warlords and military juntas.

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Blunt endorsed Mitt Romney early on and led the campaign’s efforts to recruit Republican lawmakers during the GOP primary. But his comments in an interview on KTRS radio in St. Louis may give Boston some heartburn as it tries to convince conservative voters that Romney, who enacted the predecessor of Obamacare in Massachusetts, will actually repeal the healthcare law.

“It’s one of the things that I think should continue to be the case,” Blunt said of the “dependent coverage” provision, explaining that “it’s a way to get a significant number of the uninsured into an insurance group without much cost,” because young people are generally healthy.

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Halperin: So when the President says he wants to focus a lot of the election and debate on your career at Bain Capital, do you welcome that?

Romney: Well of course, I’d like to also focus on his record.

Pressed again by Halperin, “But you welcome scrutiny of your business record, is that right?” Romney replied, “The fact is that I spent 25 years in the private sector. And that obviously teaches you something that you don’t learn if you haven’t spent any time in the private sector.”

It’d be impossible for Romney to avoid completely talking about Bain, considering how central it is to his narrative about his ability to fix the economy, but some people on both sides of the aisle have called Obama's Bain attacks unfair.

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The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has been reluctant to stray far from economic issues, is expected to outline a proposal for improving education in a speech Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

Romney has offered few details for his plans on several key policy areas, including foreign policy, health care and education. He attacked Obama's education policy while speaking to donors in New York City on Tuesday evening, previewing themes likely to play prominently in Wednesday's speech.

"This president receives the lion's share of funding from organized labor, and the teachers' unions represent a massive source of funding for the Democratic Party," Romney said. "The challenge with that is when it comes to actual reform to make schools better for our kids, they talk a good game, but they don't do it."

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Obama and Romney are locked in a dead heat over handling the economy, the top concern of voters, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows. They are tied at 47 percent.

Overall, 49 percent said they back Obama for re-election and 46 percent preferred Romney, a statistically insignificant difference.

Other recent national polls show a similarly close margin.

Earlier polls generally showed the former Massachusetts governor holding a slight lead over Obama on economic issues and Obama slightly ahead overall.

But the tightening follows an aggressive attack on Romney's business credentials by the Obama campaign, including ads painting him as a job-destroying corporate raider at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he co-founded.

Romney called the attacks "character assassination." But Obama defended the tactic on Monday as legitimate and suggested Romney's background was a poor qualification for the White House since being president involves more than "maximizing profits."

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Romney and his aides have struggled to respond consistently to intensifying criticism about his tenure at Bain Capital and how it would be reflected in his presidency. The lack of a cohesive message stems, in part, from Romney's fundamental belief that any debate that puts the economy front and center is a win for Republicans. Public polling shows most Americans are not satisfied with the pace of the recovery under Obama's watch.

The election, Romney aides say, will be a referendum on Obama's economic leadership far more than a question of Romney's business career, regardless of how much Democrats highlight that issue.

So far, Romney aides have let Democrats — led by President Barack Obama — do most of the talking.

Obama sharply attacked Romney's background as a venture capitalist on Monday, offering his most expansive comments to date about how Romney's role as founder of the Boston-based private equity firm doesn't necessarily translate to the White House.

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The presumed GOP nominee’s Wednesday speech to the Latino Coalition comes as polls show Romney way behind President Obama among Latino voters and with little hope of capturing the 44 percent of the bloc George W. Bush won in 2004, a highwater mark for the GOP.  Even New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) -- whom Romney floated as a potential vice-presidential choice -- mocked the presumed GOP’s immigration policy last week.

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Mitt Romney put out an ad Monday using Newark Mayor Cory Booker, along with former Tennessee politician Harold Ford Jr. and former auto czar Steve Rattner, to attack the Obama campaign for its criticism of Romney's work with Bain Capital.  "Have you had enough of President Obama's attacks on free enterprise?" the ad asks. "His own supporters have."

Booker, of course, has become infamous for telling David Gregory on "Meet the Press" Sunday that Obama ads criticizing Romney's Bain work are "nauseating" and "crap." Then Harold Ford Jr., who laughably tried to become the senator from Wall Street in 2010 after failing to become the senator from Tennessee in 2006, couldn't stand seeing Booker getting all the centrist Wall Street love, and jumped in behind him: ”I would not have backed off the comments, if I were Mayor Booker," Ford told his friends on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday. "Private equity is not a bad thing. Private equity is a good thing in many instances." For good measure the Romney ad also scooped up Rattner's criticism – also on "Morning Joe" – from a few weeks ago: "I don't think there's anything Bain Capital did that they need to feel bad about," Rattner told the crew.

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Ken Vogel has the scoop in Politico, based on some very intriguing INFOWARS reporting.

Everyone knows that the elite secret society known as the Bilderberg Group is one of the means by which the Lizard People exert their control over the shadow World Government. As hero journalist Alex Jones told independent cable news network Russia Today, the elite will decide at the coming Bilderberg Conference in Virginia whether to support Obama or Romney in 2012.

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Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney has embraced a House-passed Republican budget blueprint outlining deep government spending cuts, particularly in social programs. He also advocates lower tax rates while promising increases in Pentagon spending — meaning the rest of the government would have to shrink even more.

Eight leaders from wealthy democracies opened the door to more government spending to ease Europe's debt crisis at a weekend meeting at Camp David, Md. It was a backlash to widely unpopular austerity measures pushed principally by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

President Barack Obama welcomed the move, citing "an emerging consensus that more must be done to promote growth and job creation right now." That's in line with Obama's contention that tough austerity measures should await a stronger economy.

But there's clearly no such consensus in American politics.

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"That's not been a topic of discussion," Romney campaign adviser Kevin Madden said when asked if the Republican former Massachusetts governor would compete in the heavily Democratic state.

Romney was never a hero in the liberal bastion, and aides say there are other ways he can win the White House and deny President Barack Obama a second term without the 11 electoral votes Massachusetts offers.

The fact that Romney likely cannot win Massachusetts — and probably won't even try to — illustrates the degree to which his currying favor with conservative Republicans in GOP presidential primaries has alienated the moderate base that launched his political career.

If Romney defeats Obama while losing Massachusetts, he would be the first presidential candidate elected without carrying his home state since before the Civil War. James K. Polk lost Tennessee en route to the White House — 168 years ago.

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore, who had spent years in Washington as a senator and vice president, fell short of winning Tennessee in his losing White House bid. Other notable home-state losers include Democrats Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota in 1968 and Adlai Stevenson of Illinois in 1952 and 1956. Republicans need to go back to 1936 to find a nominee who didn't carry his home state: Kansas Gov. Alf Landon.

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They're hoping you don't. And acting like it never happened (even though most of their words are just clicks away online.)

One by one — with the exception of holdout Ron Paul — the GOP also-rans have coughed up endorsements of their onetime rival. And as they do, they're pulling rhetorical backflips to distance themselves from their former harsh assessments of Romney.

Don't try this at home, folks. It takes a professional politician to pull it off with a straight face.

A sampling of the also-rans' anti-Romney rhetoric when they were candidates and their obligatory niceness after endorsing Romney.

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RICK SANTORUM

The former Pennsylvania senator still doesn't have trouble curbing his enthusiasm for Romney. He waited a month after dropping out of the race to endorse Romney, then emailed his tepid endorsement in the dead of night. He finally got out the E-word in the 13th paragraph of his 16-paragraph statement.

THEN:

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