Facing the very real possibility that Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio could become the next speaker of the House, both parties are working hard on his profile.

The Democratic National Committee will release this television advertisement slamming “The Boehner Plan” on Tuesday. The ad is part of a plan to make the midterm elections a choice between the leaders of the two parties, The Wall Street Journal notes. It will be broadcast for several days in national cable markets.

“John Boehner opposes funding for government jobs, jobs for teachers, for cops, for firefighters,” the narrator says. Then, over Asian-themed string music, the narrator continues, “Boehner has a different plan: Tax cuts for businesses and those that shift jobs and profits overseas. Saving multinational corporations 10 billion.”

In a pre-taped interview to be broadcast this morning on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Mr. Boehner said that if approving a bill to extend cuts for middle class were “the only option,” he would support it.

“We don’t know what the bill’s going to say, all right,” he said. “If the only option I have is to vote for those at $250,000 and below, of course I’m going to do that. But I’m going to do everything I can to fight to make sure that we extend the current tax rates for all Americans.”

(In the interview, Mr. Boehner also made it clear that he’s not ready to give up smoking – that’s one thing he has in common with the president.)

The Times’s Eric Lipton takes a look at Mr. Boehner’s close ties to lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.

They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.

Ad Nauseam: Despite the sluggish economy, campaigns are having no problem opening their coffers for political advertising. Borrell Associates, an advertising research and consulting firm, predicted that political ad spending will reach $4.2 billion this year, double the $2.1 billion the firm estimated was spent in 2008. General market advertisers, on the other hand, aren’t expected to return to pre-recession spending levels until at least 2013.

Tea Party March in Washington: What’s a weekend of political activism training in Washington without a march to the Capitol steps?

At noon, the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks will lead a large Tea Party crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue to the steps of the Capitol, where demonstrators will hear remarks from Dick Armey, the chairman of FreedomWorks; Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the chairman of the House Republican Conference; Alveda King, conservative political activist and niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; and Andrew Breitbart and Erick Erickson, two conservative activist journalists.

“The general theme [this year] is ‘we will remember in November,’” FreedomWorks president and chief executive, Matt Kibbe, told The Daily Caller.

Looking Left: Senator Charles E. Grassley, a senior Republican from Iowa, may have a firm grasp on re-election, but he may still have a thing for the left. After a debate on Friday, reporters asked why he avoided eye contact with his Democratic opponent, Roxanne Conlin. His reply, according to the Des Moines Register: “She’s a really good looking woman. I don’t have a problem looking at her.”

Newt on the Big Screen: A straight-to-DVD movie produced by Citizens United and Newt Gingrich, one of the most prominent critics of the proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, premiered in Washington Saturday night on the nine-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, warning viewers of the impending threat of radical Islam. “The war on terror, and the ideology behind it, have only just begun,” Mr. Gingrich’s wife, Callista Gingrich, says in the trailer while the couple stand stiffly in front of an image of the New York skyline.