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Is this emerging as the new party line on Palin among other top Republican politicians? Last week, Haley Barbour told Chris Matthews that Palin is “a lot brighter than she gets credit for,” and on yesterday’s @katiecouric, Fox News Channel host and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee trotted out a similar-sounding soundbite:

This week our favorite lady from Wasilla sucked the air out of the national conversation with the release of her mega-hyped memoir Going Rogue. So who were the winners and losers of Palinpalooza? We tally up the big gainers — the lady herself and a certain newsweekly, for starters — and pit them against those who didn’t quite thrive. Has anyone heard from John McCain lately? Let’s go rogue one more time!

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Maybe Friday was an exceptionally slow news day. In fact, in a week of all Twilight, Oprah, and Going Rogue, real news did seem to cease. But does that really give Countdown — with Lawrence O’Donnell sitting in for Olbermann — license to forgo their headline story altogether in favor of a highlight reel replaying all of the Sarah Palin jokes from across television this week? Is no one on the Countdown writing staff funny?