Former RNC chairman Michael Steele, for one, believes laws concerning gay marriage should be discussed and decided at a local level. Panelist John Heilemann then asked Steele what he thought about the fact that, at one point, local standards held that it was unacceptable for black men to marry white women. Steele rejected the comparison.

Last month, when HBO debuted the teaser trailer for their adaptation of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s best seller Game Change, it became clear why they chose to cut out about two thirds of the book and only focus on the McCain/Palin half of the campaign. Clearly they decided that they’d rather do a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little known Governor into the limelight instead of the epic battle of wills that made up the book’s Obama vs. Clinton sections. The full trailer, released today, continues the same theme and gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the “monster” they’ve created.

Chris Matthews took notice of Ron Paul‘s presidential campaign today, and wondered how long it would be before the libertarian congressman would finally give up his bid to get the Republican party nomination and run as a third-party candidate. Matthews recalled another fiscally conservative independent who did very well against two establishment figures: Ross Perot, almost twenty years ago. Matthews compared the two candidates and discussed with the panel whether Paul could be just as successful running as an independent.

When HBO first announced their movie adaptation of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s best seller Game Change about the 2008 election, many were puzzled. The movie would apparently only follow the John McCain/Sarah Palin side of the campaign which really only made up a third of the book. Everyone could imagine what the reason was. As fascinating as the Barack Obama vs. the Clintons side was, people just love them some Palin impressions. Well, now a teaser trailer has been released and that was clearly HBO’s thinking too. The clip is edited to treat Julianne Moore’s Palin basically like the shark in Jaws.

The rise of Newt Gingrich in the polls has been quite a turn of events in the 2012 race, and with Mitt Romney running consistently alongside, on his program this morning Chris Matthews asked his panel to assess the race against Romney from the White House’s perspective, and, consequently, the race against Gingrich from Romney’s perspective. On the latter point, panelist John Heilemann indirectly praised Romney’s thick skin, joking, “If I were him, I would be suicidal” at the prospect of tying Gingrich.

At noon eastern time today, the Alex Wagner era at MSNBC began with the debut of the former Politics Daily White House correspondent’s newshour, NOW. Joined by a whip-smart panel that included HDNet‘s Dan Rather, Politico‘s Maggie Haberman, and New York Magazine‘s John Heilemann, Wagner kicked off the show with an examination of how President Obama‘s handling of the debt supercommittee is playing with voters.

As part of our one-part series Project: In Vino, Mediaite set out to capture media elites, gathered to fête Hardball host Chris Matthews‘ Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, in their alcohol-lubricated natural habitat, and maybe to drink some of it ourselves. With the aid of a hidden camera, I ventured to MSNBC’s book party Tuesday night to tear the lid off of this den of open bars and Wagyu beef hors d’oeuvres.

In New York magazine this week, John Heilemann contends that President Obama is the “best thing Israel has going for it right now” and despite some setbacks he remains a president “every bit as pro-Israel as the country’s own prime minister — and, if you look from the proper angle, maybe even more so.” The [...]

On The Last Word Wednesday night, host Lawrence O’Donnell invited guests Richard Wolffe and John Heilemann to discuss House Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans’ response regarding Barack Obama‘s request to address a joint session of Congress the day following a GOP presidential debate.

Despite an instant, commanding lead in the polls, newly-minted GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry is already being viewed as “unelectable.” The panel of reporters on Sunday’s The Chris Matthews Show reached a general consensus that Perry’s loose talk and extreme views will eventually lead the Republican establishment to choose the more moderate, more electable Mitt Romney to challenge President Obama in the general election. Barely a week into his campaign, the Texas Governor has talked himself into trouble, and not just with liberals and Democrats.

Despite an earlier discussion on Morning Joe that President Obama was “invisible” and not tough enough in negotiating with Tea Party Republicans, Lawrence O’Donnell stopped by to try and convince Joe Scarborough and The New York Times that Obama is actually doing everything correct right now. O’Donnell argued that Obama is “absolutely winning the perception that he is the one who is reasonable.”

Joe Scarborough was starting to get really worried that a deal might not be reached between Republicans and Democrats before the August 2nd debt ceiling deadline. As Scarborough wondered whether everyone in Washington understood that the ongoing debate “is shaking the world’s confidence” in America, most on the Morning Joe panel agreed that Speaker of the House John Boehner is not helping the situation with some of his comments on television yesterday.

Chris Matthews hosted a discussion with his guests regarding what President Obama might have to do in order to appeal to independent voters and get re-elected? While some on the panel suggested it will be difficult to get young voters out in the same numbers as in 2008, New York magazine’s John Heilemann warned Matthews that this time around in 2012, the “hope” is very much gone and Obama’s strategy will be the “politics of fear.”

During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, NBC’s Chuck Todd offered an interesting take on the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the possible implications it has for certain media outlets on this side of the pond. Will similar publications in the States, he wondered, face the same sort of scrutiny as News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch‘s NOTW has?

In addition to exploring potential Republican presidential campaign strategies, Chris Matthews also asked what President Obama’s perspective on the 2012 election might be? The panel of guests agreed that Obama and his campaign team were feeling confident, especially given the potential opposition.

While we still have no idea who’s running against Barack Obama in the 2012 election, the candidate announcements in the Hollywood 2008 election are coming in fast and furious! Just a few weeks ago, Julianne Moore was announced as Sarah Palin in the upcoming HBO film Game Change about the election and, since she looks basically nothing like Palin except in the broadest of categories, the only thing we could tell about her John McCain-playing counterpart was that he’d probably be older and probably be balding. But who could it be? Robert Duvall? Gene Hackman? Bruce Willis? Well, now we know as HBO has announced the casting of Ed Harris in the role.

Despite the chuckles some might have at the idea of Reverend Al Sharpton giving someone advice about how to be taken seriously, while appearing on Morning Joe, Sharpton was humorous and even insightful with some of the wisdom he gave to Sarah Palin. The panel reacted to a new poll showing Palin’s favorability significantly dropping, which prompted Sharpton to recommend that there may be a path back for Palin.

With continuous resignations in the wake of the NPR hidden camera sting operation, the Morning Joe panel discussed whether NPR should continue to be federally funded, but did not seem happy to have to talk about it. Sitting in for Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle summed up the opinion of most on the panel when he suggested “talking about NPR, it’s ridiculous. It’s tedious.”

While there is widespread outrage over Sarah Palin‘s misappropriation of the term “blood libel,” very little attention is being paid to the fact that her response is fixed around the lie that criticism of Palin has centered around the use of common electoral “targeting” metaphors, rather than the specific use of crosshairs, a lie that was called out last March by Gabrielle Giffords herself.

Chris Matthews closed out this week’s show by asking his panel of guests who they thought might make a third party run in 2012 should President Obama‘s poll numbers remain in the tank. Conclusion: It has less to do with Obama than whether Sarah Palin is the nominee.

Here’s a new entry into the GOP 2012 presidential field (and by new I mean so old he’s new again): Jeb Bush. On his show this morning Chris Matthews pondering “who might beat Barack Obama?” This of course is the question plaguing the Republican Party. For all the attention and hoopla surrounding Sarah Palin no one is really convinced that even if she could snag the Republican nomination she has any shot at beating President Obama in the general. But Jeb might.

Woo-hoo! Elena Kagan is everywhere! It’s Kaganfest 2010! She’s totally debatable as a Supreme Court nominee! She knows Eliot Spitzer! She’s better for a headline than Taylor Momsen! Everybody loves the Supreme Court! That is…now. But in 2008 during the campaign, no one cared.

This morning on the Chris Matthews Show, Time’s Joe Klein said that what is different between today’s Tea Partiers and past anti-government movements is the presence of Fox News, “which allows its commentators like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck to rouse the Tea Party”, and a GOP that is lacking in a “responsible, moderate” leadership. Not to mention, Beck and Palin (and Rush Limbaugh) are close to committing sedition. Video after the jump.

Turns out Game Change, the bestselling 2008 election gossip tome that introduced “Negro dialect” and “O’Biden” into our political vocabulary, was only the first volume in a presidential election series. Authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin signed a book deal today with Penguin Press, abandoning Game Change publisher HarperCollins for more than $5 million dollars to do it all over again in 2012. But if the campaigns know Heilemann and Halperin are watching, isn’t it guaranteed they’ll be less embarrassing, and thus less interesting?

That’s the question poised in Clark Hoyt‘s public editor column in the New York Times this Sunday, as Game Change tops the paper’s nonfiction best-sellers list. The “racy” stories of “dysfunctional” relationships are captivaating, but led Hoyt to a question of journalistic ethics: “How do you deal with a talker of a book reported in a way that the paper’s own standards do not permit?”