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Over the last several days, Romney's been holding a kind of audition for several running mates -- Rob Portman, Kelly Ayotte, Tim Pawlenty, Paul Ryan -- during his bus tour through the Rust Belt, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did not make the trip. Maybe that's because he's not being vetted by the Romney campaign, ABC News' Jon Karl reports. Despite all the political hype around Rubio, he hasn't yet been asked for financial records or to fill out questionnaires, even though Romney's vetting process began two months ago.
That revelation comes one day after Rubio announced that he would not try to pass his version of the Dream Act -- which would allow the most sympathetic illegal immigrants to stay in America -- because President Obama "dealt with" the issue by issuing an executive order stopping the deportation of young illegal immigrants. That put Rubio back on-message with the Republican party's line on illegal immigration, even though Rubio hadn't yet drafted the legislation. So it's a funny parallel that Romney talked a lot about how Rubio embodied the American Dream, but according to ABC News, he was never serious about actually picking him to be VP. National Journal's Josh Kraushaar suggests that while Romney would like Latinos votes, he needs working-class whites even more.