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TPM's Live Wire caught this quote from Republican strategist Mike Murphy on Meet the Press this Sunday. Shorter Mike Murphy, please let Mitt Romney do well on Super Tuesday because Santorum and Gingrich are driving Mitt Romney off a cliff to the right.

I think it's too late and the damage is already done. There's no way Romney can walk back the comments he's made over the last year without looking like more of a ridiculous flip flopper than he does already. The late night comics are going to have a field day with him if he tries, thankfully, since we obviously won't be able to count on the likes of David Gregory to do it.

GOP Strategist: Primary Scaring 'The Hell Out Of' Independent Voters:

Republican strategist Mike Murphy said Sunday on NBC's Meet The Press that the primary is alienating independent voters and that the establishment is eager to pick a nominee and move on to the general election.

After Virginia, Murphy predicted, Romney will "be in a pretty commanding place in the nomination. And on behalf of the Republican establishment, it's about damn time. We want this thing to get over, because we see those independent voters eroding as we scare the hell out of them with the histrionics of our primary."

Full transcript below the fold.

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On Meet the Press this morning, Republican strategist Mike Murphy called Rep. Paul Ryan the "bravest man in Washington" for being willing to go after "entitlements" even though as he admits, it may not be politically popular or "fair." I don't know about anyone else but if I hear one more of these talking heads repeat that it is somehow the "adult" or "grownup" or "serious" to throw working people, seniors and the poor under the bus so we can continue these military occupations and continue with tax cuts for the rich, I'm about ready to break my television screen.

Note to the beltway Villagers and T.V. pundits like Murphy, Chris Van Hollen is right here. There's nothing "brave" about them taking care of their wealthy campaign contributors. What would be brave is any of them admitting we can't balance our budget if they all refuse to raise revenues and by that I mean raising taxes on those that can afford it. As Van Hollen noted during the segment, that would mean they'd have to contend with Grover Norquist coming after them, which is something no Republicans seem willing to risk.

Transcript below the fold.

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Peggy Noonan, as Bob Shrum rightfully points out, attempts a bit of history revisionism with her defense of the poor downtrodden Robert Bork and the reasons he was not confirmed for a position on the Supreme Court.

NOONAN: Mm-hmm. Look, I think that since the Bork hearings it has been very hard for young lawyers who want to go forward in the judiciary to realize anything but this. If you are colorful, if you are interesting, if you are forthcoming and share your thoughts and philosophy and views on the way up, when you get to your confirmation hearing for the court, they will put a noose around your head, hanging you with every interesting thing you've ever said. I, I happen to think the Senate Judiciary Committee has not done a good job of vetting and bringing out the thoughts of, of Supreme Court nominees for a long time. I think they should change. Let those nominees be forthcoming, let them speak. And I think this whole sense we've got that you can't say anything interesting on the way up ought to just go away. Oliver Wendell Holmes today would not be allowed on the U.S. Supreme Court because he said such fabulous, interesting things.

SHRUM: He wouldn't have, he wouldn't have to have a confirmation hearing, Peggy, because they didn't have them in those days.

NOONAN: Well, fair enough. Fair enough. But we do have them now, and they ought to summon thought, and they ought to respect individuality and taking a different view, and creativity, frankly.

SHRUM: Well, look, here's what should...

NOONAN: Those things shouldn't kill you.

Yeah...colorful and interesting. That's not exactly how I'd describe him. Here's an op-ed from People For the American Way back in 1987 explaining the reasons for their opposition to his appointment and defending this ad narrated by Gregory Peck.

BORK HEARINGS SHOWED HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS; A Very Small Poll Tax:

To the Editor:

You say (''Who Torpedoed Judge Bork?'' editorial, Oct. 13) that the critical factor in the opposition to confirmation of Robert H. Bork as an associate justice of the Supreme Court was the merits as ''ventilated in fair, exhaustive, sometimes brilliant hearings.'' We agree and are proud of the role People for the American Way played, with others, in contributing information and ideas to the debate.

But you also say there were ''exaggerations'' in an ad narrated by Gregory Peck and produced by our group to educate the public about Judge Bork's record. We disagree.

At Robert Bork's confirmation hearing to be Solicitor General, he defended the poll tax struck down in Harper v. Virginia, saying, ''It was a very small tax, it was not discriminatory, and I doubt that it had much impact on the welfare of the nation one way or the other.'' In his 1987 confirmation hearing, he held firm to this view, stating, ''It was just a $1.50 poll tax'' (committee print draft, page 129).

Judge Bork's statements on literacy tests are also a defense of their use -he characterized the decisions upholding Congressional authority to ban literacy tests as ''very bad, indeed pernicious, constitutional law.'' Under his theory, the courts and Congress would be prevented from taking any action, and the only remedy would be through constitutional amendment. While Judge Bork recognizes that the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, one form of a right of privacy, at his confirmation hearing he reiterated his long-held view opposing an unenumerated right, ''I do not have available a constitutional theory which would support a general defined right'' of privacy (print draft, page 266).

Judge Bork was not running for the legislature; he sought a lifetime seat on our nation's court of last resort. We have no reason to believe, and we did not suggest, that as a legislator he would vote to enact a poll tax. Judge Bork's statements clearly indicate, however, that as a judge, he would defend a state legislature's ability to enact a poll tax. It is on his judicial philosophy, not his personal preferences, that his nomination must be judged. JOHN H. BUCHANAN ARTHUR J. KROPP Washington, Oct. 13, 1987 The writers are, respectively, chairman and executive director of People for the American Way.

Shrum did a nice job of making those points during the segment. Full transcript via MSNBC below the fold.

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David Gregory asks his panel on Meet the Press about Alan Grayson's remarks on the House floor this past Tuesday and whether "there's a level of shrillness in the debate that is not helping America".

As Rachel Maddow points out, this type of rhetoric is so common with the GOP that it's hardly noticed, but when a Democrat does it everyone's suddenly paying attention to it.

David Brooks responds by trying to say it's all just a media circus and by doing his best to try to distance the Republican party from the likes of Beck, Limbaugh and Levin. Brooks is right about the media circus, but he's wrong about America being a "center-right" country and he's wrong about the influence of right wing talkers on the Republican Party. Just because a few of them are trying to distance themselves from Glenn Beck's madness doesn't mean they're not still dancing to their tune.

Transcript below the fold.

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MSNBC's Take Two web extra with Rachel Maddow and Mike Murphy. Rachel is asked if she'd ever consider running for office and Mike Murphy gives his picks for who the GOP front runners will be in 2012 presidential election.

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While discussing the success of Sarah Palin's book Mike Murphy echoes David Brooks with his statement that "the noisiest parts of kind of the conservative media machine have far less influence than the mainstream media machine that covers the Republican world thinks they do". Murphy needs to tell that to those sour-grapes Palin voters hitting those tea bag protests across the country. I also wonder if he thinks there's a difference between the "conservative media machine" and Fox News?

Rachel Maddow rightly points out they're not going to be able to dismiss Palin that easily and need to answer for the brand of conservatism that has elevated her to the position she has in the party, 2012 nominee or not.

MURPHY: No, she will sell a lot. I'm, I'm going to buy it. I'm going to wait for it to get spell-checked, but then I'm going to buy it.

GREGORY: Right. And she's number--I should point out, I mean, number one on the best-seller list for Amazon.

MURPHY: Yeah. No, no, look, she has a constituency. She'll never be the nominee, I totally agree with David. I agree with Steve Schmidt, it would be actually a disaster if she was the nominee. I do wish my friend Steve felt that a year ago when a lot of people were asking John McCain to put her on the ticket. But the truth is--and I'm going to agree with David here, too--the noisiest parts of kind of the conservative media machine have far less influence than the mainstream media machine that covers the Republican world thinks they do. These radio guys can't deliver a pizza, let alone a nomination. And you can case study that out in the last election. So I--the question is whether or not our party will learn, when we have a pretty good midterm victory due to Obama's mistakes this time, that turning up the volume is not the reason that we're going to do well, I believe, in the midterms. And the fact is to get all the way, there are a lot of things we have to do to modernize conservatism to be successful.

MADDOW: I, I do think that there's a little bit of reckoning that needs to happen on the right for Sarah Palin's success. I mean, she was the vice presidential nominee, she is going to sell a kazillion books and she is the biggest brand name in Republican politics still right now. And she's chose--the person who's writing her book, her last--the last person who she co-authored a book with was called "Donkey Cons" and it was co-authored with a guy who's widely believed to be and I believe him to be a white supremacist. So she's chosen Lynn Vincent, who's written a book with a white supremacist, to write her book, and she's the biggest name in Republican politics.

MURPHY: Oh, but, Rachel...

MADDOW: And you can dismiss her and say she's not going to be the nominee, but I do think the right needs to sort of answer for what's happened to conservatism.

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Okay, in what world is it ever a good thing to ever have an election stolen? Joe Scarborough seems to think the ayotollahs rigged the election because Obama's Cairo speech scared them into over reaching and making sure he didn't get credit for the reformers winning in Iran, but if they did, it's a good thing in the long run for the United States.

If they rigged the election Joe, it's likely for the same reasons the Republicans have rigged elections in the United States...to stay in power. Not because they're worried about American politics.

GREGORY: Let's just also address what is the still breaking news out of Iran, and the fact that there is belligerence coming out of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime.

MURPHY: Yeah.

GREGORY: And this administration has a real delicate balance here...

MURPHY: Well...

GREGORY: ...which is are you going to engage? And how do you do it now?

SCARBOROUGH: Right. And how fascinating; we heard the vice president--I mean, they've been looking at the numbers. Did you hear the old, the old Irish pol looking at us, saying, "You know, 70 percent of the vote came from urban areas. That's not Ahmadinejad's strong suit." They know these numbers don't add up. I mean, that's a very--I think that's the strongest message this morning. Joe Biden suggested this morning the numbers just don't add up in Iran.

GREGORY: Right, that Iran is not an actual democracy here.

MURPHY: Well, and I hope that's not news to them.

GREGORY: Yeah.

MURPHY: I mean, behind the--he kept referring to the supreme leader, the Grand Ayatollah, who really pulls the strings there. And now the Iranian democracy, the legitimacy is out the window in the eyes of the world.

GREGORY: Right.

MURPHY: So these are bad guys of no good faith. How do you engage with them if obviously they don't mean much of what they say?

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I guess MSNBC thinks that Joe Scarborough doesn't get enough face time on their network since they just had bring him on the panel on today's Meet the Press. And who would think that Harold Ford Jr. and Juan Williams would be the two voices of reason in this week's Sunday lineup? Scarborough tried to compare Bush's spending to what's in Obama's budget.

MR. GREGORY: Welcome, all of you. Well, here it is. It's not a, a big document for $3.6 trillion, but it is a significant document. "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise." And this is no ordinary budget. This is how David Leonhardt described it in The New York Times this week: "The budget that President Obama proposed is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters. ... More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years."

Joe Scarborough, tax increases and a real focus on, if you like, wealth transfer from the wealthy to the middle class.

MR. JOE SCARBOROUGH: If you like wealth transfer, this could be great.

MR. GREGORY: Yeah.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: The, the thing though is I keep hearing people saying that this is a bold step forward, it is a new direction. I think, as a fiscal conservative, it's more of the same. For people to say that George Bush didn't engage in stimulus spending over the past eight years--I would say reckless spending--when you had two wars, tax cuts, a $7 trillion Medicare drug benefit plan and, and the biggest increase in domestic spending since LBJ, they--the Bush administration was about as reckless as it got. So to say that we're turning the page and we're actually going to double what George Bush did or triple what George Bush did doesn't seem like a new direction to me.

Yeah Joe. It's just the same. Why didn't I think of that? Ripping off tax payers to profit the drug companies. Starting endless wars with billions unaccounted for. No bid contracts for hurricane recovery and military occupations. Tax cuts for the rich like you voted for before you left office. It was stimulus! Yeah... that's the ticket.

And it gets worse from there. Gregory sounded like Brit Hume was not the only one to get the GOP talking points memo for the day. Harold Ford Jr. actually did a pretty good job of going after Scarborough for once. And Mike Murphy really, really wants someone else besides the very rich in this country to pay more taxes as well if we're going to raise taxes on those making above $250,000. What a guy.

Read the rest of the transcript below the fold.

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