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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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Cynthia Tucker does a good job of cutting through all of the typical Villager opining about President Obama's poll numbers and with whom he is in or out of favor. When it comes down to it, what Americans are concerned about is jobs and the economy. It kills me to hear the others on the panel talk about what decisions our politicians are making purely in terms of the optics and whether the policy decisions being made are going to harm the President or either party politically, rather than as Tucker does, framing the discussion as to how those decisions are going to affect people's lives.

Howard Fineman and Norah O'Donnell also both seem to think that President Obama should have been able to work miracles with this economy given the obstructionist Senate he's got to deal with and fail to lay the blame for the slow recovery on the Republicans who did their best to make sure the stimulus was watered down. Jobs should be the number one priority for the Democratic Party if they don't want to get hammered this November. The Republicans are well aware of this and doing their best to make sure as many people suffer as possible if it helps get them reelected.

Cynthia Tucker was exactly right here. Voters aren't going to care if someone calls the President an "activist" if they see what he's doing improving their individual lives and they're able to work and take care of their families. The rest of the bunch are just having an exercise in Villager navel-gazing.

Matthews: First up, oh the irony of it all. President Obama is in poll trouble today because many in the center think he’s done too much. Since the inauguration, Obama’s lost ground with independents on whether he’s got the right policy to be President, down 21 points with independents, the true centrists. But here’s the irony or contradiction, he’s also dropped among the liberals. Nine points; they think he hasn’t done enough.

And how about the Republicans? Another irony. They’re pounding the President on policy but only 26% of voters think Republicans would make good decisions themselves.

Howard, it’s purgatory for the President isn’t it? He seems to be damned for doing too much by the center, damned for not doing enough by the liberals.

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Rep. Alan Grayson and former Rudy Giuliani staffer and king of the false equivalencies Wingnut author John Avlon had a little dust up over polls on John King's show. Grayson took Avlon to task over a recent Gallup poll which shows President Obama's approval rating down to 38% with independent voters. What I wish he'd have called him out for is his claim that voters are more worried about the debt than jobs and the economy. Since he used the words "independent voters" and didn't say which poll he was citing it's impossible to say if he was cherry picking some statistics.

The larger problem with what Avlon did here is one that Digby pointed out a few weeks ago.

Conflation Fail:

FAIR does an overview of the polls which show that the beltway obsession with the deficit is not, in fact, shared by the country.

But I did want to highlight this one piece of evidence supporting my contention that to the extent people do care about --- they just don't understand it. [...]

This is one of the reasons why I have been so frantic that the administration was feeding into the deficit hysteria. They don't seem to get that people don't actually care about "the deficit," they care about "the economy" and they fail to make a distinction between the two, especially since we have right wing wrecking crew that makes a point of conflating the two.

It's a problem.

Yes it is and people like Avlon here hyping fears over the deficit is just another example.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Alex Castellanos Republican dirty trickster claims that President Obama has been a divisive president because he's...gasp, daring to take on Wall Street and insurance companies. I'm sorry Alex, but anyone's going to claim he's being divisive, those are two items where I think you're failing pretty badly with your talking points. The only division I've seen on those matters is the liberal base thinking they've not been tough enough with what may be coming and the astroturf tea bagger dupes out there with their Hitler signs. The reality I live in with fellow co-workers who aren't too happy about what's happened to their 401K, there isn't anything "divisive" about regulating Wall Street at all. We're also not too fond of our insurance premiums going up year after year.

He then goes on to say that "the rehabilitation of George Bush is well underway". And he said it with a straight face. Sorry Alex, but history is not going to treat George Bush well despite your best attempts at turd polishing. I'd love to know what street Castellanos lives on, but if I had to guess it's one called Upside Down Land. What's white is black and vice versa in this hack's world. He should be taken about as seriously as CNN's other newest contributor, Erick Erickson. They're both nothing but flacks for the Republican Party that never allow facts to get in the way of their talking points.

Transcript below the fold.

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Bill Maher and Jesse Ventura talked marijuana legalization, how to give third party candidates a chance in our elections, alternative voting, states rights, whether you can be religious without being a member of an organized religion and the Vatican's problems on Real Time. I thought it was a pretty good show all around tonight. I don't agree with Bill and Jesse on everything by any means but I sure as hell would enjoy the cable "news" shows more if more of them were half as informative as Bill's show was tonight.

For those of you without HBO, they'll have the Overtime segment posted a bit later on the Real Time web site if you'd like to watch it.

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In what world does Blanche Lincoln's sort of "independence" leave anyone "smiling"? Apparently after watching this hackery, it does in CNN's Rick Sanchez's world. Sanchez and Gloria Borger have a nice little pity party for Senator Blanche Lincoln and do their best to paint her as being beaten up by extremists on both sides.

Since when is someone who's taking all kinds of corporate money and voting like a Republican make them either "independent" or a "centrist"? Borger and Sanchez should be ashamed of themselves for this segment. ConservaDem Lincoln has been acting in the interest of her campaign contributors and not the interest of the party she is supposed to belong to or the interest of her constituents. Sadly who she's taking money from and how that might be affecting her votes is too much to ask either Sanchez or Borger to point out.

SANCHEZ: Let me show you something else because the Democrats have their own problems. Look at Blanche Lincoln. This is Blanche Lincoln's ad. She's a Dem. And if you study the ad -- folks, I am going to play this for you. Watch to see how many times President Obama comes up in the ad. And tell me if she doesn't come off sounding more like a conservative than a progressive or a liberal. Play it, Rog.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINCOLN: I'm Blanche Lincoln and I want to show you what it's like in Washington these days. And your tax dollars? This is why I voted against giving more money to Wall Street, against the auto company bailout, against the public option health care plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: She's voting against everything that could possibly increase your taxes, and there is no mention in that ad of, "I support the president" or let's do health care reform. You know, I'm sorry, but I'm looking at that thing and I'm thinking, she's sounding more conservative than she is progressive or liberal or whatever you want to call it.

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The Republican Party is pulling the strings behind the tea parties but protesters still have some things in common with Democrats, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"The Republican Party directs a lot of what the tea party does, but not everybody in the tea party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, astroturf, as opposed to grassroots," Pelosi told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas Sunday.

"We share some of the views of the tea partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C," Pelosi continued.

"So, common ground with Nancy Pelosi and tea party movement?" asked Vargas.

"Well, no, there are some. There are some because they, again, some of it is orchestrated from the Republican headquarters. Some of it is hijacking the good intentions of lots of people who share some of our concerns that we have about the role of special interests and many tea partiers, not that I speak for them, share the view, whether it's -- and Democrats, Republicans and Independents share the view that the recent Supreme Court decision, which greatly empowers the special interests, is something that they oppose," explained Pelosi.