The other day, Mitt Romney claimed that he’s “not concerned about the very poor,” a clumsy way of arguing that the middle class, not the least fortunate, are the ones who have suffered most from the recession and would be the primary focus of his presidency.

The truth is that if this argument is intended as a class-based dog-whistle appeal, it could hold a lot of attraction to Americans.

A new National Journal poll finds that a 51 percent majority agrees that the middle class is “suffering the most” from the slowdown, versus 45 percent who say the poor have been hurt most. And speaking of the dog-whistle aspect of this, the poll also finds that 53 percent say they are most concerned that “the government taxes workers too much to fund programs for people who could get by without help.”

But look what happens when Americans are asked whether specific programs should be cut:

Larger version here. Huge majorities say Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid should not be cut at all to help reduce the deficit. A majority, 51 percent, even wants food stamps and housing vouchers to be spared any cutting.

Also critical: The public isn’t buying the argument that entitlements are the problem. Just 3 percent say the biggest reason we’re facing large deficits is spending on the elderly, while a 46 percent plurality blames this on the fact that “wealthy Americans don’t pay enough in taxes.”

Which may explain this finding: “Asked whose federal budget plan they expected to more closely reflect their priorities, 47 percent of adults said Obama while just 37 percent picked congressional Republicans. ”

Scrambling the politics of this is the fact that the safety net is increasingly taking on a role not just in protecting the poor, but also in maintaining the middle class. In a Sunday piece, the Times reported that “the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits.” This creates a very interesting context for the battle that’s about to unfold.

As Jonathan Cohn noted today, the looming budget battle will frame the coming campaign as a battle over priorities. While it’s true that by flirting with the idea of deep Medicare cuts has perhaps compromised the Democratic Party’s reputation as the number one defender of the safety net, the fact is that Mitt Romney has embraced Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicare as we know it, which will again be debated in Congress this year. Meanwhile, Obama’s budget — and campaign message — are all about deferring deficit reduction in order to preserve the promises at the core of the existing safety net.

And when the American people are focused on the specifics, the latter priorities are the ones they seem to favor. Let’s hope Congressional Democrats don’t forget this when the Sirens of Austerity start singing to them again.

Since the birth control controversy broke, it has been an article of faith among even some neutral commentators that the battle would cause Obama to lose crucial support among Catholic swing voters.

But Gallup has performed a new analysis of its tracking data that should complicate this assertion: It finds that Obama has suffered no meaningful downturn in recent days among that consistuency, even among church-going Catholics.

Gallup is set to post the analysis on its Web site later today, and Gallup editor in chief Frank Newport gave me a preview of the forthcoming findings.

“Our analysis basically shows that Catholics’ opinions of Obama are little changed through Sunday,” Newport told me. “Our article will show that we can detect little change in Catholic approval so far.”

With the controversy continuing in the wake of Obama’s newly-announced accommodation — which has actually won approval from some Catholic groups — the new data casts doubt on the political efficacy of the continuing GOP and conservative attack on the White House stance. Mitch McConnell has vowed to keep up the crusade, though senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins have edged towards supporting Obama’s compromise.

Newport said the data would show that Obama’s approval is at around 46 percent among Catholics. The larger tendency is for Catholic opinion to roughly track with overall public opinion, and Newport said that dynamic remains unchanged. “There’s been no statistical change in either direction,” Newport said.

Some right-leaning pundits have said that the real key to gauging whether the battle is damaging Obama is to look at approval among church-going, as opposed to secular, Catholics.

“We don’t see much change in church-going Catholics, either,” Newport said.

Newport cautioned that opinion could still shift, since the public takes time in processing information about big controversies. But the data reflects a full week that passed after the controversy hit full boil, Newport said.

The politics of this fight have turned largely on the framing: Opponents have cast the White House stance as an attack on religious liberty; while supporters have framed the debate as one about access to birth control and, more broadly, about women’s health. However Catholics see the issue, there’s little indication that it’s hurting Obama among them as of now.

Stay tuned for the full release early this afternoon, which will be posted on Gallup’s Web site.

Ever since the signs of an accelerating recovery started trickling in, Mitt Romney has struggled to craft a coherent response to the good economic news. He’s bounced back and forth between two claims: That Obama made the recession worse; and that yes, okay, the economy may be improving, but only in spite of the President’s policies.

With still more good news coming in about the auto industry’s rebound, and with the high-stakes Michigan primary looming, Romney has now published an Op ed in the Detroit News that will drive a lot of discussion today. In it, he makes a series of claims:

1) The auto companies’ turnaround is “indisputable good news.”

2) However, Obama’s auto rescue reveals “all the defects in President Obama’s management of the American economy,” and things “would be better” without his intervention.

3) In rescuing the auto industry, Obama followed Romney’s suggested approach (managed bankruptcy).

4) However, after following his lead, Obama then mucked things up with a government bailout, leaving taxpayers on the hook for billions to benefit “union bosses.”

5) Despite the industry’s rebound, we nonetheless would have been better off letting the “free market” do “what it does best.”

Putting aside the convoluted nature of this series of claims, Romney has left an inconvenient fact out of his account: He predicted that the auto bailout would lead to the failure of the entire industry. In that now-infamous Op ed entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” Romney said that a bailout would be “suicidal,” and that if the companies got it, “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.”

Obviously, that hasn’t happened yet. Which is why Romney is now fixating on taxpayer debt and “union bosses.” It’s the only way he can hail the good news about the industry’s rebound while simultaneously deriding the government action that helped bring it about as a failure.

Romney’s claim that his approach (managed bankruptcy alone) would have been better for the industry has been dismissed by most experts who say it would not have been viable, given the state of the economy at the time. No amount of bluster about “union bosses” can conceal the fact that on the core ideological question of whether goverment should have stepped in to bail out an entire industry — rather than letting the free market work its magic — Obama got it right, and Romney got it wrong.

More broadly, this highlights Romney’s larger dilemma: How do you acknowledge that the economy is improving while simultaneously persuading voters that things would be improving faster still if it weren’t for the guy running the place?

* Brinkmanship intensifies around payroll tax cut: With the GOP agreeing to extend the payroll tax cut without paying for it, Ezra Klein games out the Senate Dems’ plan to hitch unemployment benefits and the Medicare patch to the tax cut in order to box Republicans in further:

If push comes to shove, they’ll just amend the payroll tax cut with the unemployment benefits and the Medicare patch complete with pay-fors on those items that the two sides agree on. If Republicans want to block a tax cut for all Americans because they’re offended by the idea of helping the unemployed and keeping grandma’s doctor from taking a 30 percent pay cut and fleeing the Medicare program, let them.

Whether Republicans would find that as intimidating a prospect as Democrats hope is anyone’s guess.

The House GOP can pass their payroll tax cut extension and challenge Senate Dems to pass it as is — whereupon Dems would tack on UI and the Medicare fix and kick the ball back into the GOP’s court — which means a reprise of last year’s game of chicken with a tax cut for 160 million Americans.

* Will House Tea Partyers go for payroll tax reversal? Politico reports that conservative House GOPers are expressing

extreme discomfort with the reversal. One conservative Republican mused about a primary challenge for voting for something that adds $100 billion to the deficit. Another said the party, after harping all year about the troubled Social Security trust fund, is now proposing to “rob it blind.”

The simple fact is that many House conservatives don’t support this tax cut for 160 million working Americans. They can only bring themselves to do so in exchange for big concessions from Dems, such as a federal wage freeze — or more sacrifices from working people — and more spending cuts that could harm the recovery.

* Elizabeth Warren holds slight edge over Scott Brown: She leads the Massachusetts Senator 46-43 in a new WBUR poll, which is within the margin of error.

Bright spots for Brown: He holds a very slight edge on which candidate would do more for regular people — this race is all about the middle class — and has higher favorability ratings than Warren. However, there’s still a large bloc of Massachusetts voters with no clear opinion of her.

* Scott Brown veers hard right on contraception: Steve Benen, on the Senator’s rejection of Obama’s birth control accommodation:

Scott Brown apparently believes the way to win a close race in Massachusetts in the 21st century is to block access to contraception and other forms of preventive care — even when his more centrist GOP colleagues are siding with the Democratic president.

This could become a major issue in the race — more on this later.

* Do Romney’s advantages really make him inevitable? We keep hearing that Romney’s organization and money make him inevitable, but Aaron Blake offers an interesting reality check: Santorum has won more states than any other condender without much of either, because this campaign is all about media coverage and momentum.

Key takeaway: The campaign is now shifting into a more national phase, and the question of whether Santorum can ramp up will determine whether Romney can be stopped.

* Santorum-mentum!!! We now have a third national poll, this one from the New York Times and CBS, showing Santorum surging into a statistical tie with Romney, his rise fueled by conservatives, Tea Partyers, and evangelicals.

Yes, I know, national polls don’t matter. But these findings are relevant, in that they signal that these core GOP constituencies can’t bring themselves to come to terms with Romney as the nominee.

* They just don’t really like him that much: Nate Silver sums up Romney’s problem:

In states and counties that would appear to be strong for him, turnout is generally running below its 2008 pace. But in his weaker areas — say, most of the state of South Carolina — it has been steady or has improved some.

Silver also points out that voter commitment to Romney is weaker than to Santorum in Michigan, where Romney has deep and longtime ties.

* Senate Dems imperiling the recovery? The New York Times editorial board excoriates Senate Democrats for being politically unwilling to pass Obama’s budget. It argues that Obama’s budget is heavy on economic stimulus, and not passing it is tantamount to putting politics before the recovery — even if Dems are the ones to blame.

Meanwhile, the Post edit board, which is partly critical of the budget, flatly states that he was “right” to break his promise to cut the deficit in half, rather than put the recovery at risk.

* And the budget battle frames Campaign 2012: Jonathan Cohn gets to the heart of it:

Budgets aren’t just about deficits, after all. They’re also about priorities. Obama has signaled that he’s willing to reduce the deficit, but only in a way that preserves the core promises of existing programs. Republican leaders say they’re willing to end those promises. It’s a pretty stark choice — and one we’ll be debating for the next year.

What else?

* In the wake of the House GOP’s payroll tax cut extension concession today, Dems are mulling a procedural trick to force the GOP’s hand on unemployment benefits, a sign they think they’ve got the leverage.

* Sam Stein on how Obama’s budget represents a clear shift from the politics of austerity (which are so 2011!) to the politics of recovery and reelection.

* Santorum-mentum! Mirroring today’s Pew numbers, Gallup finds Rick pulling into a statistical tie with Romney. All eyes on Michigan at the end of the month...

* Indeed, the pro-Romney Super PAC is going up with a $600,000 buy in Michigan, despite his deep ties in the state.

* Yet as Taegan Goddard notes, the Romney Super PAC’s first round of ads appears to be attacking ... the Incredible Shrinking Newt.

* Amy Walter on why Romney can’t launch an all out attack on Santorum without falling into a familiar trap, in which the negativity drags him down. And Romney’s dilemma continues to deepen.

* Ezra Klein sounds the alarm:

The mounting danger for Romney is that his candidacy will lose its central justification: That he’s the most electable Republican in the field. Readers know I’ve long been bullish on Romney’s prospects, but if Santorum can pull out a win in Michigan, and Romney’s numbers keep sliding, it becomes hard to see how he pulls this out.

* As does David Frum: “If Americans get the idea that a vote for Romney is a vote for the Ryan plan, Romney is more or less doomed.”

* National Review calls on Newt to drop out and let Santorum have his shot at being the leading not-Romney. Watch for more of this as an indication of whether conservatives are settling on Santorum as their true not-Romney alternative.

* Correction: This morning I identified Brad Schneider, a Dem candidate for Illinois’ 10th district, as a Blue Dog, but in fact the Blue Dog PAC has not endorsed him. Apologies for the error.

* It’s surprising that this needs to be pointed out, but as Digby notes, Obama’s failure to cut the deficit did not occur in complete isolation from the behavior of the other major party in Washington.

* And as Steve Benen notes, on marriage equality, the arc of history is bending towards justice in Washington state:

The head of Focus on the Family was asked last year about same-sex marriage, and he practically conceded defeat, saying, “We’ve probably lost that.” I’m very much inclined to agree. Most of the country now believes two consenting adults should be legally permitted to get married if they want to.

What else?

Now that Obama has reached an accommodation on birth control that has won some support on both sides of the debate, could it now become a wedge issue against the GOP, as I speculated the other day?

Mitch McConnell vowed over the weekend to turn the battle against Obama’s proposal into a crusade that won’t end until the White House backs down. But as Igor Volsky notes, two GOP Senators — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — have voiced cautious support for Obama’s compromise, breaking with the idea that it’s an assault on religious liberty.

Snowe: “It appears that changes have been made that provide women’s health services without compelling Catholic organizations in particular to violate the beliefs and tenets of their faith.”

Collins: “While I will carefully review the details of the president’s revised proposal, it appears to be a step in the right direction...The administration has finally listened to the concerns raised by many and appears to be seeking to avoid the threat to religious liberties posed by its original plan.”

Make no mistake: This dynamic will be crucial going forward. If more Republicans decide that Obama’s proposal is politically or substantively difficult to attack, it could encourage Dems to express greater unity behind the plan, and further marginalize opponents of it, making it tougher to continue this fight.

So where are Senators like Kelly Ayotte, Lisa Murkowski, and Scott Brown on this? A spokesman for Murkowski declined comment. It’s hard to imagine Brown, who’s facing a tough challenge from Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, voicing opposition to the idea — as McConnell put it over the weekend — that requiring insurers to cover birth control as a health care expense for women constitutes interfering “with your religious beliefs.”

Also: What vehicle will Republicans support? Will they back the amendment offered by GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, which would allow either employers or insurers to deny any health coverage they find morally objectionable, at a time when polls show that requiring employers to cover birth control is backed by nearly six in 10 independents and nearly seven in 10 women?

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UPDATE: Senator Ayotte has just come out against Obama’s proposal. Here’s her statement, sent over by her office:

“The president’s proposal leaves religious institutions vulnerable to federal coercion. This debate has always been about religious freedom. As I fight for a full repeal of Obamacare, I will continue to push for a legislative solution that protects conscience rights.”

UPDATE II: Here’s the response from John Donnelly, a spokesman for Senator Scott Brown:

“Senator Brown appreciates President Obama’s willingness to revisit this issue, but believes it needs to be clarified through legislation. The senator signed onto bipartisan legislation that writes a conscience exemption into law, which is an important step toward ensuring that religious liberties are always protected.”

UPDATE III: Brown spokesman Donnelly confirms that the Senator supports GOP Sen. Blunt’s legislation.