. >> jackie kucinich is a political reporter and jennifer jacobs is the chief politics writer for the "des moines register." jennifer, i want to start with you. these attacks, four years ago mitt romney's attacks on -- newt gingrich was hoping to boomerang them and it hasn't boomeranged. >> no, it really hasn't. iowans always feel uncomfortable with these attacks. one of the reasons why they liked newt gingrich is because he really did stay clean. they respected him for that and they weren't kidding when they said we like that he hasn't been attacking other republicans. >> so what you're saying is this grumpier newt not good? >> not good. >> what's been interesting is mitt romney responded to these sort of newt complaints over the last few days. let me play to you what he said to savannah on the "today" show this morning. >> i know the speaker is angry. i don't know why. but my anger is going to be focused on president obama's failures to put the american people back to work. >> i think he knows why. >> i think he knows why the speaker is angry. i think romney is smart to kind of try

i want to bring back my guest, jackie kucinich and jean cummings who is bloomberg's deputy government editor. it's great to have you stick around with me. you heard part of that speech there. jean, let me start with you. do you feel that was very presidential of mitt romney? is that what he is trying to define himself as, as someone who can stand up and come out with the prebuttal to the state of the union by the president tonight? >> definitely romney's campaign from the beginning has been running essentially a general election campaign. they have aimed almost all of their criticism until recently at president obama and not at his rivals in the primary. and that speech there is a pretty good republican indictment of the obama administration. romney's definitely getting better at delivering those kinds of speeches. the one concern i think i'd have in his campaign is that it's almost like they're looking ahead to the next game, and the truth is romney has got a really tough primary fight on his hands right now, and if he's not careful when he's looking ahead to the general and trying t