doug lazader is live in washington with the details. doug? >> good morning, guys. president has been talking about coming out with a new plan to deal with jobs in september. and now we know there's going to be a big speech to go along with that. the president heads to his adopted home state of illinois today wrapping up what has been this unusual bus tour through 2012 battleground states. the white house insists this is not a campaign trip. if it was, the president's re-election campaign would have to put a pretty substantial bill but at each stop and we're talking through minnesota, iowa and now illinois today, it has the feel of a campaign swing. he has two town hall meetings on the official itinerary today but this trip has been punctuated with unannounced stops along the way. there's a certain amount of campaign rhetoric here with the president taking a number of shots at republicans in congress. and again, back on the economy, he's trying to craft a new economic message and there's a chance for the white house now to defend what is considered to be the preside

joining us now from washington, d.c., doug lazader. doug, i don't know. well, you know, there is that argument and it's certainly being made by a lot of folks, the president heads from the midwest to the vineyard with a quick stop here in washington along the way. a little later today, the first family will begin relatively long vacation on the island enclave of martha's vineyard. this will be his third trip there since taking office and there's obviously nothing unusual about presidents taking time off or getting heat for doing so. but this time around, given the state of the economy, the white house is clearly concerned about what many around here call the optics of this trip. the fact that the president, in fact, the president was asked about this on cbs news, whether this trip sent the right message with so many americans out of work and the nation's economy really taking a beating. he says congress isn't in a mood to work anyway. >> should you be going on vacation? >> well, no, because i think if all we're doing is the same posturing that we saw befo

doug lazader is in washington this morning for us with more on this.stand the romney campaign fired back pretty quickly on this. >> yeah, this thing really caught fire yesterday when it came out in politico and essentially it says that hope and change will become in their words a relentlessly negative campaign against mitt romney and it's going to apparently get pretty ugly according to politico's sources on this saying that they're going to portray romney as unauthentic, unprincipled and word, according to politico, used repeatedly by obama's advisors, weird. now, that did merit a response pretty quickly from the romney campaign. one of their campaign managers put out this statement. saying that president obama will say and do desperate things to hold on to power because he knows he has failed. these are despicable threats, nor president obama's billion dollar campaign will put americans back to work, save their homes or restore their hopes. now, the obama campaign then responded to this response to politico, one of their campaign operatives said the