On the run today, but let me point out my favorite mini-meme in political journalism these days: do GOPers want Sarah Palin on their side or not?

AP reports:

New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie has ended speculation that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will campaign for him.

Christie told Millennium Radio 101.5 FM on Thursday that he will not ask Palin to come to New Jersey.

Palin associates say her decision to quit as Alaska governor was partly driven by her wish to help Republican candidates across the country. But Christie says the failed vice presidential candidate would detract from the New Jersey issues he wants to emphasize.

Whoops. There goes that explanation. Only the most die-hard conservative Republican candidate in the most die-hard conservative area and in a tough fight will want to have Palin at his or her side--for wherever she campaigns, she will become the story.

This ain't liberal bashing of Palin. It's recognition of practical politics. The Hill reports:

Republicans facing tough elections in 2010 don't want Sarah Palin campaigning with them.

Though the soon-to-be-former Alaska governor is seen as popular with the conservative grass roots, several Republicans said she'd help them by staying home in Wasilla.

Several of these Republicans hail from districts or states carried in 2008 by President Obama, a frequent target of Palin's criticism. Republicans must keep these districts and win others where Obama is popular if they are to gain seats next year.

GOP Rep. Lee Terry (Neb.), who squeaked out a victory despite his district's overwhelming turnout for Obama, said he'd rather have House colleagues campaign for him than Palin.

"There's others that I would have come in and campaign and most of them would be my colleagues in the House," Terry said.

Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican from Northern Virginia, which is increasingly becoming Democratic territory, offered caution when asked whether he'd welcome a Palin fundraiser.

"I don't generally need people from outside my district to do a fundraiser," Wolf said.

Several other lawmakers indicated a wariness about accepting help from Palin, but did not want to criticize the GOP's vice presidential candidate from last year. They said Palin could hurt them by firing up Democrats.

You betcha. Turns out that if Palin really wanted to help her party comrades, the best thing for her to do would have been to remain as governor and not reinforce her--to be kind--unconventional image. If she quit so she could better assist Republican candidates, she made one big mistake.

Here's a related question: will Palin raise money through her political action committee, SarahPAC, to share with Republican candidates elsewhere? And will these candidates be in states other than Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina?

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Look at this illustration that accompanied USA Today's story on a new poll on the Republican Party:

Who's missing? Sarah Palin. When Americans were asked who speaks for the Republican Party, the winner was Rush Limbaugh (13 percent). The next four were Dick Cheney, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush (who was picked by 3 percent). Palin didn't make this list. Responding to this poll, Republican strategist Ed Gillespie told reporter Susan Page, "We cannot be a party of balding white guys." Gillespie, who has a decent crown of hair, ought to check that illustration. Only one of the five is non-balding; only one of five is not white. None are non-male.

In politics, there's always time to fill a vacuum in leadership. Perhaps the more troubling indicator for the GOP is this particular finding in the poll: 33 percent of the GOP respondents said they have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party. When one-third of your own rank-and-file doesn't like you, you're in trouble. (On MSNBC, super-smart analyst Charlie Cook noted that only 4 percent of Democrats are not pleased with their party.)

But does the GOP's disaffected third want the party to go more to the right or to moderate? That's not clear. But two-thirds of the Republicans polled said they yearn for the party to hold the conservative line. (A majority of the wider pool of respondents said the GOP should seek to attract moderates.)

The bottom line: if the POed GOPers crave more conservative red meat, the party can only solidify its base by moving in a direction that will further alienate it from most voters. If those POed GOPers desire a more moderate party, they are at odds with most of their party comrades. Either scenario is bad news for the Republican Party. The party is in a spot where it may not be able to do much on its own to improve its fortunes--other than to wait for economic disaster and/or an overseas crisis that causes voters to become disenchanted with President Obama and Democrats. And that's not a strategy; that's a hope.

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I'm on the run today, but I noticed that Ben Smith at Politico had an intriguing item:

The Republican National Committee yesterday removed a controversial video comparing Nancy Pelosi to Bond girl Pussy Galore from its YouTube account.

Today, the RNC asserted its copyright to the video to remove any trace of it from YouTube, asking the service to take a copy of the video down from the account of a Politico reader who had reposted it.

"This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Republican National Committee claiming that this material is infringing," says the e-mail from YouTube, forwarded to me by the reader.

An RNC spokesman yesterday wouldn't explain why the committee took the video down.

UPDATE: The video resurfaces elsewhere.

The GOP video used clips and music from James Bond movies to poke at Pelosi for having accused the CIA of lying to her about its use of waterboarding and other matters. Judging from the RNC note to YouTube, it seems that some Bond-connected party decided to play Dr. No and told the GOP that it had unfairly swiped Bond imagery or music. I suppose it's possible that the complaint came from a media outlet upset that this GOP video had used one of its news clips. But political parties are always stealing that sort of material for silly attack ads. In this mystery, I'm betting that the Bond copyright people--a gang as ruthless and relentless as SMERSH--dispatched one of their best licensed-to-sue operatives to end this evil GOP conspiracy.

Political lesson of the day: don't mess with Bond, James Bond.

RAIN, SOTOMAYOR, AND ME. From the Thursday's night edition of MSNBC's "The Ed Show." I don't know if you can tell, but I was being rained on, as we discussed the SCOTUS nominee.

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It's Sotomayor Mania!

I'm watching Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch being grilled by David Shuster on MSNBC for claiming that Judge Sonia Sotomayor would put her "feelings" above the law. Shuster demands proof of that. Fitton refers to when she once said that a "Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Fitton accuses Sotomayor of racism. And other conservatives are latching on to this quote to denounce President Barack Obama's selection of Judge Sotomayor to succeed Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Fitton also is saying, "Conservatives...expect Republicans to oppose this nomination in large numbers."

Well, they can expect all they want, but....Elsewhere I note that the Sotomayor pick could lead to a split on the right. Obama has handed Senate Republicans a tough choice: they can attack Sotomayor, the first potential Latina Supreme Court justice, and risk alienating Hispanic voters (and possibly women, too), or they can yield to Obama and tick off social conservatives who want blood. What to do?

One sign of this dilemma was the first reaction from the Republican Party. On Monday morning, the GOP zapped out a press release noting that when Howard Dean was Democratic Party chair, he immediately blasted the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito Jr. But, the release noted, Michael Steele, the current GOP chair, was not prejudging Sotomayor and was now calling for "thoughtful discussion" of her judicial record. So here was Steele using the moment to proclaim, "Hey, I'm no bombthrower."

That might help Steele, given that he's developed the reputation of a shoot-from-the-hip politico. But such let's-be-reasonable rhetoric must not hearten Tom Fitton and other conservatives ready for an ideological charge against Sotomayor. They want a fight. As of this early moment, there's no sign their Republican pals will give them that.

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Michael Steele, as he told me, is the gift that keeps on giving--but to Democrats. Now he's trying to boot up Steele 2.0. Or is it 3.0? Or 4.0? The Republican Party chairman is giving a speech on Tuesday to Republican Party state chairman, and MSNBC's "First Read" was given some advance excerpts:

According to excerpts of his remarks, Steele will say that the GOP isn't going to dwell anymore on past mistakes. "The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over. It is done... We have turned the page; we have turned the corner... From this point forward, we will focus all of our energies on winning the future." He also will announce that Obama's honeymoon is over. "Candidate Obama was very moderate in his views, but President Obama could not possibly be further to the far left... We are going to take this president on with class; we are going to take this president on with dignity. This will be a very sharp and marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of the last president."

This is rich. After eight years of Republican misrule--the Iraq fiasco, a poorly managed war in Afghanistan, Katrina, torture, no real action regarding climate change, the subprime crisis, and economic policies that did nothing to avert the worst economic downturn in decades--Steele is now saying, "You can't touch this." He's like a grade-schooler trying to call "time out." Given that it's going to take the nation years--perhaps decades--to climb out of the hole that the Bush administration dug, it's a bit unreasonable for him to say the past is done and the political clock starts now. The folks who screw up the books don't get to say, "it's time to turn the page." Nah, the statute of limitations on these misdeeds and mishaps is longer than a few months. By the way, how long did GOPers run against Democrats on Vietnam and HillaryCare?

Steele is dreaming if he believes that his pronouncements can change a political landscape that remains scarred and ruined by the folks who were running his party just months ago. And one prominent GOPer--a fella named Dick Cheney--doesn't seem ready to turn any page.

This past weekend at the White House Correspondents Association dinner and the pre- and post- parties and events, I had several interesting moments with Hollywood and DC celebrities: Mike Myers, Peter Orszag, Richard Belzer, David Axelrod ("Isn't Robert Gibbs doing a great job?"), Goldie Hawn, Valerie Jarrett, Todd Palin, Rahm Emanuel, Matthew Modine, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Val Kilmer, Desiree Rogers, Carole King, Eric Holder.

I never saw ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was supposed to be at the dinner, and I did have a couple of questions for him.

I nearly asked Sting if he remembered me interviewing him 30 years ago in the locker room of Rhode Island Junior College--right after he was screaming at Stewart Copeland, "you can't keep a beat!" But I elected not to; Sting was deep in conversation with Kevin Bacon. (Fill in your own degrees-of-separation joke.)

Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels tells GOPers in Washington to stop "whining.".

David Brooks complains that Republicans "are no longer the party of community and order" (as if they were ever the party of community) and that they "talk more about the market than about society, more about income than quality of life."

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney disses Sarah Palin for making Time's list of 100 most influential people: "[W]as that the issue on the most beautiful people or the most influential people? I'm not sure. If it's the most beautiful, I understand. We're not real cute." (Actually, Romney is kinda cute--certainly more handsome than influential these days.

On Tuesday morning, I attended a breakfast policy talk featuring Elizabeth Warren, the head of the congressional oversight panel that keeps an eye on the TARP program. Her remarks were off the record -- not that she said anything that secret or that extraordinary (such as, "Take all of your money out of the bank now!!!!") But without reporting what she did say, let me note that she comes across as pretty darn terrific: darn smart and darn sensitive to the needs and travails of average American families. I'm ready to endorse her as replacement for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

But that's not what I wanted to tell you about. Later in the morning, I was at Union Station, and I spotted former New York Gov. George Pataki getting a shoeshine. As he got off the stand -- shoot, I forgot to notice if he tipped the guy -- I asked what he was doing in town.

"Government stuff," he said.

"Government?" I asked. Was he joining the Obama administration? He clarified:

Two weeks ago, the major national political narrative was congressional Republicans taking on the new president regarding a stimulus bill they decried as wasteful and ineffective. But that has shifted. The big-news story now is Republicans bickering among themselves. I was on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show on Monday night to discuss the take-the-money-or-not-debate that is weighing down (and perhaps further ruining) the Republican Party:

Meanwhile, there's more evidence of a snark-ridden riff within the GOP.

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, Michael Steele, who was elected chairman of the Republican Party last week, said of name-calling and the politics of obfuscation: "I don't have time for it." He's obviously not taking advice from Karl Rove.

Steele was an interesting choice for the GOPers. The former lieutenant governor of Maryland and a onetime unsuccessful Senate candidate, he's something of a moderate--in both politics and style. (He supported stem cell research, for instance.) And he made history, becoming the party's first African American chief. But in pulling together some material on Steele, we at Mother Jones came across an interesting contradiction.

When Steele spoke to a mainly African American crowd in February 2008, he praised Obama and said, "I'm very proud to see Barack Obama do what Barack Obama has done and is doing. I am philosophically polar opposites with the man. But it doesn't change the fact that we are from the same community. And it doesn't diminish nor weaken my pride in what he's done." The crowd seemed to appreciate these supportive remarks. See the video:

But at the Republican convention in August, when interviewed by a conservative media outfit, Steele dismissed Obama as "media creation" and a "brand," noting that Obama's success was partly attributed to "a level of white liberal guilt" in the media. Here's that video:

The stimulus bill that the House passed on Wednesday night is not perfect. No doubt, it includes spending projects and tax cuts that are not all that stimulus-y. But it's the only train at the station these days. So even though the Republicans had threatened to withhold their votes from the bill, it was sort of surprising that not a single GOPer voted for the bill. In essence, the House GOPers are betting the farm on further economic collapse. They are truly selling short.

The House Republicans are now on record as wannabe obstructionists. They say they will continue to play a role in the bill when the House and Senate negotiate the final legislation after the Senate approves its version of the measure. But the House Republicans have lost any claim of authorship. If the stimulus package has any positive results, the GOPers will be out in the cold. President Obama and Democrats will not be shy about reminding voters that the Republicans were the Party of No when it came time to save the economy. The Rs can only hope--politically--that no good comes from this stimulus.

Most, if not all, of the House Republicans will probably not face much electoral trouble for their thumb's down. The Republicans who remain in the House generally hail from conservative districts. Call it Limbaugh Land. There are not many swing-district Republicans remaining. For the House Republicans still in their seats, voting against a spending bill will not cause them much direct political risk back home. But this collective, lockstep action does define the entire Republican Party. And GOPers running for office in non-Limbaugh areas--and that will include presidential candidates in the future--will have this albatross around their neck. (For his part, Obama ought to reconsider his approach to bipartisan politics.)

Tip O'Neill once famously said that all politics is local. That may be true. But even if these House members have scored points in their districts by opposing the stimulus, they are tainting their party's national image. They now have no choice but to root for the economy to continue its collapse. Then they can blame Obama and the Dems for making things worse (or not making them better) and wasteful spending. That's not much of a political strategy. But they've decided to stay off the bus--and wish for the bus to go flying off a cliff.

STEVE CLEMONS AND ME. Did I die? Clemons writes something of an obit for me at his blog. Seriously, it's very nice. And, yes, that's my ear next to Ben Affleck. I prefer the photo in front of the White House.

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I was on C-SPAN this past weekend, discussing all sorts of things. (You should be able to see the program here, but as of this writing the link was not yet operational.) And the host played the latest Republican Party ad, which, no shocker, tries to tie Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevich. Take a look:

Ominous music. Grainy footage. Headlines showing that Obama--OMG!--once supported Blagojevich. References in news reports noting that Obama aides might have had talked to Blagojevich about filling the Senate seat Obama vacated. And the kicker: "Questions Remain."

As the indictment filed against Blagojevich notes, the guv was not too pleased with the Obama camp. So it's unlikely that any talks that did occur were of the pay-to-play variety he fancied. But here's the bigger political picture: the GOP ought to be careful in deploying the usual political attacks against Obama in the near future.

At a moment when the country confronts several crises--an economic meltdown and two ongoing wars--a distinct majority of Americans are rooting for Obama. He won the popular vote with 53 percent of the electorate. And my hunch is that given the current economic troubles, there are a number of McCain voters--who are not ideologues or Obama-haters--who would like to see Obama succeed. After all, it's their economy, too. Would these McCain voters (who may be independents) rather watch Obama help preserve modern-day American capitalism or would they prefer to enjoy him being slammed by GOP mud balls?

In the aftermath of a decisive defeat, Republicans and conservatives are nursing their wounds and wondering what went wrong. Many have come up with an easy answer: the GOP has drifted from its core principles; consequently, the voters have handed it the pink slip.

But is the drift more to blame than the principles?

Let's look at one example of this argument. Michael Steele, the former Maryland lieutenant governor and an unsuccessful candidate for Senate in 2006, is running to become the new head of the Republican Party. In a statement he released on Thursday, he said,

The Republican Party must present a vision for the future of America that relies on our conservative values and core principles. It is wrong to believe the voters have suddenly become liberal. They have just lost any sense of confidence that the Republican Party holds the answers to their problems. We must face the fact that our party has failed in recent years to live up to our own principles -- we have failed to be 'solutions oriented' in addressing the concerns of all Americans.

Does Steele have it right? Has his party failed to present "solutions" in recent years? Not really. The Republicans have presented plenty of "solutions," but the voters have not cared for them.

What are the two core principles of the Republican Party? Cutting taxes (to ensure a smaller government) and swinging a big stick when it comes to national security. There's also the social issues, such as opposing abortion rights and gay rights. But those lifestyle issues have often been a second-tier matter for many Republican leaders.

It's getting harder and harder to take John McCain seriously. In April, he said,

To promise a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, regardless of the calamitous consequences to the Iraqi people, our most vital interests, and the future of the Middle East, is the height of irresponsibility. It is a failure of leadership.

On Thursday, he said in a speech that if he were elected,

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy.

That sure sounds like a promise to withdraw troops. Now, of course, McCain is asserting that his troop withdrawal will be the result of victory in Iraq. But how the hell can he make such a vow? In his speech--which lists all the wonderful things that will be achieved by 2013 if he becomes president--he doesn't say what he will do to attain this victory. Right now, it looks as if he's going to stick to the current policy. At least Richard Nixon, campaigning in 1968, indicated he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. And don't write in: I know Nixon never used the phrase "secret plan." A reporter devised the term, and Nixon never disabused the public of the notion. He, of course, had no such plan. And it's unclear whether McCain has a clue about what to do differently in Iraq in order to net different results than those already produced.

Meanwhile, at least one House Republican, looking to prevent a GOP electoral calamity in the fall, has said that the Republicans can't cling to Bush's Iraq war policy without being decimated in the coming congressional elections. After defeating a Republican primary opponent who had challenged his antiwar stance, Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina said it was time for his party to dump Bush on the war: "If this party does not look at options and figure out how to pursue those options, we're in real trouble."

McCain and his party are in a political quagmire. Forward-march rhetoric and hollow promises may not be enough to save them. As I've repeatedly said, the war will be back--as a political issue. And all indicators--including the GOP's three recent losses in congressional special elections held in Republican strongholds--now suggest that won't be to the Republicans' advantage.