Blog Posts by David Chalian

It's back.

That now infamous photo of Mitt Romney and his colleagues at Bain Capital in 1985 celebrating the closing of their first fund with money coming out of their pockets is the only visual in a new 30-second television ad from a super PAC that supports the re-election of President Barack Obama.

Priorities USA Action, the pro-Obama group, is releasing a new television and online ad campaign today, and Yahoo News has an exclusive first look. The new ad marks the beginning of a multimillion-dollar effort over the course of the next several weeks to define Romney as an out-of-touch multimillionaire who profited from the demise of some companies in which he invested other people's money.

The ad, which tweaks the original image by superimposing a more modern-day image of Romney's head onto his body, is going up on television in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Iowa, four critical battleground states in November.

The anti-Romney ad attempts to draw a direct line from the Republican candidate's past life in private equity to some of his policy proposals today that would result in significant tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

"Now, Romney's proposing a huge new $150,000 tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent while cutting Medicare and education for us," the ad's narrator says.

The ad concludes: "Mitt Romney. If he wins, we lose."

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Rick Santorum tells supporters he is ending his presidential campaign. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

The polls in Pennsylvania were not looking pretty for Rick Santorum. Already familiar with the unpleasant feeling of being on the losing end of an advertising onslaught from Mitt Romney and his allies, Santorum faced more of the same as the contest turned to his home state.

As one Romney adviser made clear to me over the weekend, "If he wants a fight in Pennsylvania, he is going to get a fight."

It appears Sen. Santorum didn't actually want that fight. Instead, he opted to bow out of the presidential race before being forced to launch the sort of full-throated Pennsylvania campaign that may have done nothing but cement his status as someone unable to win the support of the voters who know him best.

Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul ostensibly remain in the race. But Mitt Romney's approach to vanquishing his opponents (first Rick Perry, then Gingrich, and now Santorum) is instructive about how he plans to take down a likable incumbent president.

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(Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)WASHINGTON—Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took to the same Washington, D.C., hotel ballroom stage where President Barack Obama chided his Republican opponent for his full embrace of the House GOP budget, and urged the president to stop building "straw men" to make his re-election-year arguments. As the general election begins in earnest this week, Romney was clearly trying to set some of the ground rules.

"President Obama came here yesterday and railed against arguments no one is making and criticized policies no one is proposing. It's one of his favorite strategies, setting up straw men to distract from his record," Romney said. "And while I understand why the president doesn't want to run on his record, he can't run from his record either."

[Related: Obama assails Ryan budget as 'thinly veiled social Darwinism']

"The idea of this kind of rhetorical excess I don't think serves us very well," he added.

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Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum verbally circled April 24 (the Pennsylvania primary, 71 delegates at stake) and May 29 (the Texas primary, 155 delegates at stake) on his nomination calendar Tuesday night in his speech to supporters. But those goals fail to reflect the reality that he has now slid into irrelevancy in the race.

Perhaps the most important words from the Santorum camp Tuesday night  came not from the candidate, but from his senior strategist. "We think regardless of results today, Pennsylvania becomes the make-or-break state for both candidates," John Brabender told the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.

That certainly invites the Romney campaign and its Super PAC allies to unload a ton of cash to dominate the TV airwaves in the Keystone State in hopes of delivering a knockout punch on April 24. A Quinnipiac University poll out this week showed Santorum's lead in his home state has dwindled down to six points as he heads into a three week stretch without any

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Mitt Romney waves to a crowd in Schaumburg, Ill., Tuesday, March 20, 2012. (Steven Senne/AP)

Shortly after he wrapped up his victory remarks, Mitt Romney emailed out a fundraising appeal to his supporters with a telling subject line: "Time to close"

It reflects both the frontrunner's wishful thinking that Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul would pack up and go home and the Romney campaign decision to become more assertive about declaring the former Massachusetts governor the presumptive GOP nominee.

"I think it is another sign that the Republican Party is uniting behind Mitt Romney's candidacy," senior Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN of his candidate's victory in Illinois. "At some point the reality is going to set in that Mitt is the all but certain nominee," he added.

Irrespective of how Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul plan to move through the primaries and caucuses on the calendar from now until June, the Romney campaign is shifting into victory mode. Romney no longer wants to be perceived as the weak frontrunner who cannot win the hearts and souls of the voters at the core of his own party--his campaign is pushing Romney as the experienced and prepared contender ready to defeat President Obama, particularly when it comes to righting the American economy.

If you watched Ann Romney and her frontrunning husband Mitt deliver their victory remarks in Schaumburg, Illinois on Tuesday night in front of a ballroom of supporters, you might be wondering where the extraordinarily wealthy and out-of-touch elite CEO had gone.

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What's next for Mitt Romney's campaign? (AP)Mitt Romney was right. Alabama and Mississippi proved to be an "away game" for the former Massachusetts governor.

Rick Santorum's victories in the two Southern primaries on Tuesday night demonstrated once again Romney's inability to bring very conservative Republicans and evangelical Christians into his fold. A low turnout suggested a continued lack of enthusiasm among Republicans, which is beginning to take its toll on the frontrunner.

"We did it again," a beaming Santorum declared to a ballroom full of supporters in Lafayette, La., home to the next Southern primary on March 24. "This campaign is about ordinary folks doing extraordinary things--sort of like America."

[RELATED: Santorum sweeps South: wins Alabama and Mississippi]

The Romney campaign continues to argue that delegate math is on its side. Santorum barely made a dent in Romney's formidable lead in the chase for the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination. The political momentum, and the likely infusion of campaign cash that comes along with it, however, will bolster Santorum's ability to stay in a contest that has not yet reached the halfway point in total available delegates.

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(Gerald Herbert/AP)It wasn't supposed to be this hard.

As the Romney campaign chieftains looked at the path to the Republican nomination last year, they never envisioned a struggle to win the candidate's home state of Michigan.

However, a battle plan and the realities of war are rarely in concert with one another.

Few successful presidential nominees in the modern era have gotten to be the party's standard bearer without facing down a significant and potentially mortal threat.

Mitt Romney did just that tonight. But it wasn't pretty.

"We didn't win by a lot, but we won by enough. And that's all that counts," Romney told a room full of supporters Tuesday night in Novi, Mich., celebrating his dual victories in Arizona and Michigan.

Romney continues to rack up the delegates needed to secure the nomination, but he has done little to put to rest the concerns within his party that the process has not been kind to his standing with the American electorate, specifically the independent voters who will decide the election in November.

But what Romney did accomplish on Tuesday night is significant. His victories will invite more money into his campaign coffers, more establishment Republicans to endorse him, and a lot more questions about his opponents' abilities to deny him the nomination.

Most important, the Romney victories on Tuesday will significantly dampen the increasingly loud chatter of late that the Republican Party might need a white knight (Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush) to come in and save the day.

Romney's weaknesses become clear with each passing primary night. In Michigan, the only income group he won was among voters earning more than $100,000 per year. He still can't get the heart and soul of the Republican Party — the very conservative voters — to warm to his candidacy. And evangelical Christians remain unenthused.

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The final preprimary-day polls in Michigan show a real tossup of a contest, and that is bad news for Mitt Romney.

It can't be overstated how devastating a loss in his native state, where his father served as governor, would be for Romney. He still may emerge the nominee, but a loss in Michigan nearly guarantees a protracted nomination season in which Romney is a diminished candidate still seeking support from conservatives instead of sharing center stage with Barack Obama and courting the critical independent and swing voters who will decide the election in November.

Check out my primary preview on Yahoo! Finance's "Daily Ticker" above.

Read more coverage of the 2012 Michigan and Arizona primaries at Yahoo! News.

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