Chuck Todd Unwittingly Gets the Scoop of the Day!

Viva Chuck Todd!

What Republican pundits really believe behind closed doors (but with their microphones on):



Some highlights:

Peggy Noonan: "It's over.", "The most qualified? No!," "I think they went for this political bullshit about narratives."

Mike Murphy: "The worst thing about it? The greatest thing about McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical."

Just to be clear. Here is what Peggy Noonan wrote about Sarah Palin this morning in the Wall Street Journal...

(You know, when she thought the unwashed masses were actually listening):

More immediately and seriously on Palin:

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

Advantage Obama: less coverage after Denver

One discernible pattern this year: after every major Obama success (Iowa, running the table in February, the Philadelphia Speech, Berlin), there is a period of intense media adoration, followed predictably by a fairly severe backlash against the Media stoked by Obama's opponents.

Think about:

• The backlash against MSNBC's coverage after Iowa.
• The Saturday Night Live attacks at the end of February.
• The "Obama gives a good speech, but doesn't do enough shots" attack before the Pennsylvania primary.
• The celebrity attack after Berlin.

All four of these attacks proved to be fairly damaging in the short term, leading in some measure to Obama's defeats in New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas, Pennsylvania and the narrowing of head-to-head polls against McCain in August.

Now consider what happened last week in Denver. Obama delivered another speech that was roundly praised and lauded for clearing the extremely high expectations that had been set. As Chuck Todd said, the Republicans didn't even know how to respond.

Good lord, even Pat Buchanan was impressed.

In the past, what would have followed was a media echo chamber fueled narrative praising Obama to the high heavens. That, of course, would be followed by some sort of McCain crybabying about the media's fawning, and then an attack undescoring this theme.

Except this time it didn't happen.

By trying to be oh-so-clever and stepping on Obama's speech, the McCain campaign did succesfully turn the narrative towards themselves, but in doing so they missed out on exploiting their favorite topic: not Obama's speeches, but rather the coverage of those speeches.

Obama gains by directly appealing to a record 38 million people watching his speech--and he gains because McCain failed to mount their Rovian attack on that strength.

Now the idea of "Obama fatigue" has been debated, and largely debunked. But, by going for the shock value of the Palin pick, the McCain camp sacrificed their favorite (and possibly most succesful) attack to date.

And that attack has nothing to do with "experience."