After what happened in Nevada and now in Minnesota, Team Romney is probably suffering some heartburn. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has more:

After years of quiet, relentless organizing, followers of libertarian-leaning GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul have exploded inside the Minnesota Republican Party, becoming its most potent army.

"This is one of the greatest states that I have witnessed, where I have seen the transition, where the enthusiasm's there," the grinning Texas congressman told hundreds of exuberant activists Saturday at the state party's convention in St. Cloud, where he won 12 of 13 open delegate spots to the GOP national convention in Tampa, Fla., in August. The 13th went to former presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann -- and only after a Paul supporter dropped out to let her have that spot.

In Minnesota, more than almost any other state, Paul forces have completed a historic party takeover. They proved their might Saturday, but also firmly established Minnesota as a remote GOP outpost nationally.

Now state GOP activists will march to the national convention firmly backing Paul rather than presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

No governor in recent memory has been so controversial. No governor in America is so polarizing. Everyone has an opinion about Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Here's ours: We see no reason to remove Walker from office. We recommend him in the June 5 recall election.

Walker's rematch with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was prompted by one issue: Walker's tough stance with the state's public-employee unions. It's inconceivable that the recall election would be occurring absent that. And a disagreement over a single policy is simply not enough to justify a vote against the governor.

Ford O'Connell and radio host Garland Nixon join Fox News' Chris Stirewalt on Fox News Live's Power Play to discuss the latest polling in the 2012 battle for the White House, the likeability gap that exists between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, Joe Biden's role as Obama's attack dog on the campaign trail and who Romney might select as a vice presidential running mate.

Without question, the candidate who does the best job of staying on message will likely be the next president of the United States. From NBC's First Read:

What we learned last week and this week is how hard it is for both Obama and Romney to stay on their own messages. Both had their best-laid plans for the week stepped on in various ways. Last week, gay marriage did that to Obama. This week, the debt ceiling and then Ricketts did that for Romney. It’s just never easy to stay on message (and it’s hardest part of a presidential campaign). The good ones figure out what to ignore and what to jump on.

The chances of Mitt Romney winning Masachusetts (him home state) in 2012 are just short of impossible. His chances in his native Michigan are much better, but are still a stretch at this point. If Romney loses both states, but wins the White House - he will have cleared a historic hurdle. The Washington Post's Greg Sargent has more:

[T]o find someone who was elected without winning either, you have to reach back 168 years to [James] Polk, who was elected president in 1844 despite losing his native state of North Carolina and his home state of Tennessee, where he had been Governor.

Romney will likely have to duplicate that feat. He isn’t contesting Massachuetts, his state of residence, and the odds are against him in his native state of Michigan, because of his opposition to the bailout.

What does it mean? This rare set of historical circumstances is notnecessarily predictive, but it goes right to the heart of an odd fact about Romney: He doesn’t really have a geographical base of his own; it’s one he’s inheriting as a generic Republican candidate.

To win the White House, Mitt Romney will need North Carolina and its 15 electoral votes in 2012. Luckily for Romney, the atmospherics in the Tar Heel State suggest that he should win the state. CNN's Peter Hamby has more:

Everything that could have gone right for Obama in 2008 did go right, and yet he still only won North Carolina by just 14,177 votes -- a tiny sliver of the 4.2 million cast statewide.

Thanks to his campaign's striking ability to expand the Democratic electorate, Obama even managed to win the state while losing independents to John McCain.

Volunteers blitzed college campuses and dominated the early voting game. New African-American voters were registered in huge numbers. Obama also performed better among white voters than both John Kerry and Al Gore. Crucially, Republican turnout fell off dramatically from 2004.

Obama world read the victory as a promising sign of Democratic realignment in the South and rewarded the Tar Heel State with the Democratic National Convention, which will take place in Charlotte in September.

Today, though, it's hard to find a Democrat in the capital of Raleigh who believes the president, saddled with the burdens of governing and a sputtering economy, can stir the enthusiasm of 2008 and repeat his near-flawless North Carolina performance.

Even the slightest shifts in turnout can determine the race, a prospect relished by Republicans, who were hamstrung in the last election by dampened conservative enthusiasm and a superior Democratic ground game.

The Romney campaign recently moved a state director to Raleigh and is piggybacking off the early joint efforts of the North Carolina GOP and the Republican National Committee, which have opened four field offices so far.

Team Romney won't likely reach a decision on its vice presidential selection until at least July. The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports:

Mitt Romney’s campaign has begun vetting running mates, a process that will narrow his list of possible veep picks.

The team for Beth Myers, the Romney adviser leading the search for the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, has already contacted potential running mates, according to a source close to the Romney campaign.

By beginning the process early, the Romney camp hopes to avoid the mistake of John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, when that campaign found itself unprepared for the onslaught of public attention that greeted Sarah Palin.

A source close to the campaign said prospects had been contacted but declined to say who had been contacted or how wide a net had been cast. 

From American Crossroads:

From The New York Times' Nate Silver:

The table below contains the FiveThirtyEight estimates of the probability of victory for each party in the 33 Senate seats to be contested this November. These forecasts, although they are informed by polling and other objective measures, are ultimately reflections of my best judgments and also account for “intangible” factors like candidate quality and the partisan orientation of the state. (We traditionally switch over to purely tangible factors in the summer, once polling becomes more robust and we post the official forecast model for the Senate.)

Still, if the elections were held today, the Senate races would be more localized than they were in 2006, 2008 or 2010, and Mr. King’s decision and the outcome of the presidential race could swing the partisan balance.

Ford O'Connell and Democratic strategist Doug Thornell join Current TV's Eliot Spitzer on Viewpoint to discuss Mitt Romney's decision to condemn a super PAC's plan to connect President Obama to the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright ahead of the November elections, the likeability gap that exists between Romney and Obama, and Romney's need for a compelling personal narrative for voters to rally around.