As Mitt Romney pivots to the general election and tries to close his big deficit with Latino voters, his campaign spent this week apparently backtracking on two key aspects of its controversial immigration policy. But it now appears to have come back full circle to its original positions.

First, the campaign tried to distance itself from controversial immigration activist Kris Kobach, the author of Arizona and Alabama’s harsh anti-immigration laws. Romney had touted Kobach as an informal adviser, but this week said he was merely a “supporter” not an “adviser.” ThinkProgress and others spoke with Kobach, who disputed the claim and said he was still advising the campaign, but nonetheless Romney’s staff again stood by their initial statement.

But today, a spokesperson agreed in an email to CNN that Kobach is indeed an “informal adviser.”

Secondly, the Romney campaign asserted that when the presumed presidential nominee said during a Republican primary debate that Arizona is “a model,” he was referring to the state’s E-Verify law, not its anti-immigration law, the Kobach-backed SB-1070.

But newly-confirmed immigration adviser Kobach disputed this as well. “He stated very publicly that Arizona’s law should be a model for how the federal government enforces its immigration laws. And he’s correct there too,” Kobach told CNN of SB-1070. Indeed, Romney’s “self-deportation” policy shares the same basic approach as Arizona’s law.

Kobach went on to say that he doesn’t expect Romney — who had the harshest immigration policy of any Republican presidential candidate — to moderate his stances at all when facing President Obama. “I think it would be unusual for a national presidential candidate to back away from statements he’s made in debates and he hasn’t shown any sign of doing so,” Kobach said.

Indeed, it will be very hard for Romney, whose PAC was one of the largest donors to Kobach’s campaign for Kansas Secretary of State, to distance himself from his immigration adviser or the law in Arizona.

Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s new foreign policy spokesperson Richard Grenell has an odd penchant for targeting the wives of male politicians and women in general on Twitter.

Grenell, who served as George W. Bush’s spokesperson at the UN and was announced as the Romney campaign’s new representative yesterday, has gone after Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Callista Gingrich, Sandra Fluke and others. He also asserted that President Obama’s children should be fair game for political debate. A selection of his thoughts on women:

In another comment, that has since been removed, Grennell discussed the first lady “sweating on the East Room carpet.”

This afternoon, Grennell offered an apology, of sorts, for his attacks, writing, “my tweets were written to be tongue-in-cheek and humorous but I can now see how they can also be hurtful. I didn’t mean them that way and will remove them from twitter. I apologize for any hurt they caused.”

Like many Republicans, Eric Hovde, a hedge fund manager now running for Senate in Wisconsin, spoke out publicly when Congress was considering the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) — the financial sector rescue package passed in the waning days of the Bush administration — but now he’s buying a bank that was saved with funds from the program.

Hovde, running for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), slammed the program in numerous media appearances in 2008 and 2009. “Treasury is providing a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers to Goldman Sachs and other parties, and it’s something that absolutely should be investigated,” he told Reuters.

But as it turns out, he could be one of those other parties that benefit from the effects of the program. The AP reports:

Hovde said when he got into the race that it was nearly impossible not to invest in banks that had received bailout money under TARP. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records show Hovde’s company invested in at least 33 banks that received $188 billion in TARP money.

On April 9, a community bank in Baltimore that Hovde owns, Bay Bank FSB, merged with Carrollton Bank in a $25 million deal creating the eighth largest bank headquartered in the Baltimore area. Carrollton Bank accepted $9.1 million in TARP funds in February 2009.

A spokesperson noted that Hove did not own the bank when it took TARP money, but Democrats in the state intend to make hay of it, charging that Hovde is being hypocritical.

Taxpayers may actually make a profit off TARP as the companies it saved return to health.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) will endorse and campaign with former Sen. George Allen (R-VA) today, as Allen seeks to regain the Senate seat he lost in 2006 after his infamous bullying of an Indian-American campaign tracker whom he called “macaca.” In an email obtained by Roll Call, Johnson — who oversees Senate Republican message and agenda coordination — explains that he supports Allen because, “We must change the spending and debt culture in Washington.”

In his lone Senate term, Allen voted for about $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending appropriations, 52,000 earmarks, and four debt limit increases. He also backed George W. Bush’s massive tax cuts for the rich, which exploded the deficit.

In all, the public debt increased by about three trillion dollars — more than 51 percent — during Allen’s tenure, making him the last person Johnson should trust to change the spending and debt culture.

“[O]nly a few hours” after endorsing Mitt Romney, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) criticized the presumed GOP nominee’s campaign for being overly negative and appealing too much to the wealthy. Daniels — who was considered a potential presidential candidate himself — expressed “disappointment” with Romney, who used his enormous cash advantage to decimate his GOP opponents during the primary with negative ads, for employing a “slash-and-burn” strategy.

In an interview with Indiananapolis Star columnist Matthew Tully, Daniels said candidates should focus on a “constructive program to make life better,” instead of attacking opponents — “Romney doesn’t talk that way,” he added.

But perhaps more interestingly and more overlooked, Daniels also chided Romney for appealing more to wealthy donors than struggling people. Tully writes:

“You don’t change one thing about the policies you advocate or your principles,” he said, noting instead that candidates should simply make clear how their policies would lift up those who are struggling. For instance, he said, at fundraisers Romney’s message shouldn’t be about how his policies affect the well-heeled people listening in the audience, but rather those who can’t afford a ticket to get in.

Daniels’s endorsement was pretty tepid to begin with. In an appearance on Fox News Wednesday, he said, “It must be a slow news day if this is making the air, Brian, but for what it’s worth, I did send a congratulatory note to Governor Romney the other day.”

Yesterday, presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney made a major campaign stop at the shuttered factory where then-candidate Obama spoke in 2008. The National Gypsum plant has since closed, and Romney said that fact “underscores the failure of this president’s policies with regards to getting the economy working again.”

But Romney’s implication that the plant’s closing is a result of Obama’s economic policies is undercut by the fact that the plant closed before Obama took office. The factory closed in June 2008, when George W. Bush was still president.

This isn’t the first time the Romney campaign has tried to blame Obama for something that happened under his predecessor. The campaign’s central piece of evidence in arguing that Obama has been bad for women — that 92 percent of job losses under Obama were from women — counts job losses that occurred from the beginning of January 2009, even though Obama wasn’t sworn in until the end of that month.