Around 11 a.m. in Tampa, Mitt Romney tried to grab some media spotlight by offering a "prebuttal" to President Obama's State of the Union Address. "If I were speaking to Congress tonight, I'd note that it's now been one thousand days since the Senate last passed a budget," Romney stumped in Tampa this morning. "When it comes to the economy, my highest priority would be worrying about your job, not saving my own," he added, predicting (as we noted earlier today how others have) that Obama's speech tonight will be geared toward getting reelected in November. But elsewhere, Mitt got a little ahead of himself. "It's shameful for a president to use the state of the union to divide our country," Mitt also said, er, before Obama has even made his speech. (Full text of Romney's speech here.)

"Prebuttal" attention grabs like Romney's have happened before; in 2011 Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Mike Pence tried preemptively to take down Obama's talking points ahead of his speech. And in 2008 John Edwards pulled the same PR move against George W. Bush's State of the Union, when he too was running for president. The term itself, we're told, dates back to 1997.

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Alexander Abad-Santos