just tony fratto, quinnipiac poll shows romney 58% to 36% on the economy.mussen poll shows romney 49%, 39% ahead of obama. and as john harwood said a moment ago, 40% to 34%, romney ahead of obama on the economy. tony, let me ask you this, jobless claims are rising again and the non-farm payrolls in the march employment report a week ago were very disappointing. is that going to add to the angst regarding the economy slowing down the obama campaign? >> i don't think there's any question about it, larry, all of those data points contribute to concern and unease among voters. also makes it really, really difficult for the white house and president obama to go out and tell a positive story, you know, every day like they'd like to be doing. they'd like to go out and say the economy's strong and improving and they keep having to temper their message and give a balanced message and you get the message that things, you know, could be, you know, they could be worse were it not for my policies and a tough message to sell to the american people. it keeps them on their

>> joining me now, republican admaker brad todd, former -- in fact, consultant at the crnc and tony frattoputy press secretary for george w. bush. during my opening, i talked about the ads that the romney campaign is running, the romney campaign sent me an e-mail saying they have pulled any negative ads against santorum right now and they say we have done this out of deference to senator santorum's decision to suspend his campaign for personal family reasons. brad, not sur pricing this is not the time to go negative on santorum, but actually, it is a larger question. when they go after pennsylvania, are they targeting it as a general election state against president obama or are they trying to sort of end this primary campaign so that he is not in the race in may? >> i think the question somewhat academic, i think the vase over a lot of other states on this day. romney is going to win all of them. probably win pennsylvania and a few negative ads against santorum might aid that in that process but the mindset of the romney camp has to be looking it he general election now and it is just tim

joining us is tony fratto. great to have you with us this morning. you've heard the comment from the the fed and tim geithner. your outlook right how. >> i think we'll -- we want to be optimistic in to the rest of the year. i think the fed wants to be optimistic. the fed actually do a really remarkable job but they're not good at predicting slowdowns. because they expect that their policy will have a positive impact on the economy. i'm looking at a slowdown, i don't see how the u.s. -- what's the catalyst for growth in the united states. there's no great cat the take list outside the united states with china slowing. europe in's session. uk in recession. japan in recession. so there aren't a wll lot of reasons to be optimistic for the rest of the year especially with the uncertainty that john got into with secretary geithner there. the end of the year uncertain i with the elections, with the likely withdrawal of stimulus or runoff of stimulus and questions over what we're going to do on tax policy and fiscal policy will be drags on the economy. so i