As the fallout from the Rick Perry “Camp N*ggerhead” controversy continues to build, an interesting peripheral question has emerged: How will this controversy affect the rising candidacy of Herman Cain, whose denunciation of Perry elevated this from a mere “hit piece” from the “liberal media” to an intramural fight among Republicans? The perfect storm of the “race card” and Cain’s use of a word that’s arguably as inflammatory to the conservative base as the n-word – “sensitivity” – could spell trouble for Cain’s meteoric campaign.

In an odd role reversal, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough strongly denounced Texas Gov. Rick Perry, this morning, over a Washington Post report about a hunting camp that once (and colloquially, still does) bore the offensive name “N*ggerhead,” while liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski defended Perry and mocked the news value of the story. Scarborough called the incident “disqualifying,” while Brzezinski’s faint defense involved asking whether Perry isn’t “running around screaming (the n-word) wildly at people?”

On This Week today, Christiane Amanpour brought up a point often raised about any potential candidacy undertaken by Chris Christie: whether his weight problem would be a negative with voters or not. However, while the panelists didn’t seem to agree with that sentiment, Jake Tapper suggested the grueling work of a presidential candidacy might be [...]

Earlier today, The Washington Post reported on a hunting camp connected to presidential candidate Rick Perry bearing in its title a racial slur. On This Week earlier, fellow candidate Herman Cain reacted negatively to the news, criticizing Perry for going there so frequently.

George Will criticized Rick Perry’s debate performance last week on This Week today, while also criticizing the Republican party for adopting a Southern strategy in the last few election cycles that have not always yielded positive results. Christiane Amanpour, while not wanting to pile on to the Perry criticism, wanted to address his unfortunate stumbling during last Thursday’s Fox News debate. You’ll recall that Perry slightly mangled his words when going after the many flip-flops of Mitt Romney.

On ABC’s This Week, George Will argued that over the course of Barack Obama‘s term in office, the president has put too much stock in his speeches and the power of persuasion, which has made him a less effective leader overall. Christiane Amanpour introduced the segment with a summation of the Jacqueline Kennedy tapes released last week, proposing that it is in times of crisis when a president’s mettle is put to the test.

In introducing her “powerhouse roundtable of economic experts” Sunday morning, This Week host Christiane Amanpour omitted a notable portion of Douglas Holtz-Eakin‘s résumé. Holtz-Eakin’s intro included “former director of the Congressional Budget Office,” but it might have been helpful to mention that Holtz-Eakin was chief economic adviser to Sen. John McCain‘s presidential campaign.

After suggesting the current Republican primary field is a weak one, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson claimed that New Jersey governor Chris Christie is strongly considering a presidential run of his own, despite his many public statements to the contrary.

On ABC’s This Week today, Senator Jim DeMint went after President Obama for his upcoming speech this week on jobs, asking for a written proposal that can be calculated by the CBO instead of an address by the president to Congress.

ABC’s This Week continued it’s now consistent pattern of featuring the most entertaining roundtable debate of all the Sunday morning shows. This morning Steve Rattner, a regular contributor to MSNBC’s Morning Joe and former advisor in President Obama’s Treasury Department was rightfully taken to task by George Will for suggesting Tea Party members of Congress were “economic terrorists” because of their “unreasonable” opposition to any tax increases. At first Rattner attempted to wiggle free from his own words, but then Will demonstrated the ridiculousness of the entire analogy.

It’s been a long month of July in politics– the debt crisis debate has certainly taken the wind out of the sails of many in Washington and, for anyone watching at home, leaving a bad taste of cynicism and fatigue in one’s mouth. But now it’s August, Congress is in recess and the news cycle is ready for a recharge. While we wait for the next Ground Zero Mosque imbroglio, here is something to thaw out the collectively grizzled and warn political hearts of America: your favorite cable news personalities interacting with dogs.

Paul Krugman was very disappointed with President Obama and the Democrats for allowing the Republicans to frame the debt debate. Krugman insisted on the This Week roundtable, “from the perspective of a rational person, in other words, a progressive on this stuff, we shouldn’t be talking about spending cuts at all now.” Yet, according to Krugman, the “rational people” have now lost big time.

President of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist may have just revealed another way to win his support that might be less politically painful than having to sign his taxpayer protection pledge. All you have to do is look great in a bathing suit! During his appearance on ABC’s This Week, Norquist suggested Republicans will take back control of the Senate in 2012 because all of the open seats will either be in Red states or because Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown and his bathing suit will be running for re-election.

The roundtable discussion portion of the Sunday morning news shows is often the most entertaining and illuminating segment of the entire program. Given that the top-of-the show politician guests try their hardest (and often succeed) to stick to their talking points and to avoid going off script, it’s often left to the roundtable participants to provide an element of unpredictability to the Sunday morning festivities. Of the three shows with weekly roundtable segments, in my opinion, week in and week out there is a clear hierarchy between the shows based on the variety of topics discussed, the diversity of guests and the overall enjoyment of hearing the conversation.

This morning Arianna Huffington appeared on the This Week roundtable, and found herself echoing sentiments of others like Mike Huckabee that media reports on Michele Bachmann’s migraines were completely unfair. Huffington claimed Bachmann is definitely getting the “female treatment,” and instead wished that people would focus on the many legitimate problems with Bachmann instead.

While many are concerned with the possible “doomsday” scenario of what might happen to the economy if leaders in Washington can’t reach an agreement and raise the debt ceiling, don’t count conservative commentator George Will among the alarmists. Instead he theorizes that many Americans, possibly including himself, are tired of hearing such over-dramatic and catastrophic language being used so frequently.

This is either unintentionally hilarious or merely bizarre, but either way it seemed worthy of some attention. On This Week, during an extremely sophisticated and insightful debate on the importance of the Constitution, Christiane Amanpour apparently attempted to keep the conversation at an elevated level of intelligence by showcasing an SAT-worthy word in the middle of her statement. Amanpour casually dropped the word “perspicacious,” yet such a big word apparently served as a bat signal for the ABC graphics department to go into emergency action.

Conservative commentator George Will did double duty today, first defending the Constitution from those who believe the document was intended to be interpreted flexibly, and then later on This Week, also delivering a message much less likely to be cheered in some conservative circles. Will argued that it is impossible for the deportation of all illegal immigrants in the country to ever be considered a realistic solution.

Christiane Amanpour assembled a panel of women to discuss why it’s always the men that get entangled with sex scandals, and whether or not it could simply be explained by the fact that there are many more male politicians? Claire Shipman and Torie Clarke cited various research and anecdotal observations to argue that in fact women are much less likely to lose focus on the job, unlike their male counterparts.

With Sarah Palin fever sweeping across the media again, persistent Palin critic and conservative commentator George Will clearly was not excited by the speculation surrounding her potential run for President. Donna Brazile, Jonathan Karl and Ed Gillespie joined in on the conversation, yet Will had the most pointed remarks regarding how Palin is a “genius at manipulating” the infinite media attention she receives.

He was out of work a matter of hours? Rick Kaplan, who announced his exit as executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric on Tuesday, has been hired as executive producer of ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour.

ABC News president Ben Sherwood announced the hire today, describing Kaplan’s mission as a bold one: “to lead This Week to #1 and to guide ABC News to dominance in the 2012 elections and beyond.”

On Sunday morning’s This Week, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani pushed back against suspicions that his country was somehow complicit in hiding dead terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Host Christiane Amanpour asked about the strain on the relationship between the US and Pakistan that bin Laden’s presence in such a conspicuous location presents, Haqqani said bin Laden might have gotten help from some “jihadi has-beens from the eighties.”

It should have been a slam dunk. The Rev. Franklin Graham spent his weekend spouting crazy-talk about President Obama on Sunday shows, questioning both his citizenship and his Christianity. He unwisely followed up with an appearance on The Last Word, where host Lawrence O’Donnell would surely introduce Graham to the woodshed. Instead, Graham rolled O’Donnell like a junkie with a Lunesta habit.

Yesterday’s Easter Sunday episode of This Week was titled “God and Government” and focused on the unique relationship between “politics and the pulpit” according to host Christiane Amanpour. The later half featured a roundtable discussion about Barack Obama‘s faith and the perception by some that the president is actually Muslim (supported by a poll that indicates that a fifth of America think believes so.) Cokie Roberts explained the reason why: Americans are racist.

Reverend Franklin Graham appeared on This Week and host Christiane Amanpour got him to share his feelings on many of today’s political personalities. In addition to speaking favorably of many potential Republican candidates for President, Graham revealed that he too is curious about why President Obama has yet to produce more records related to his birth.