Good morning! Do you like Republican debates but lament that they are always so late at night? Well get ready for Sunday morning’s Meet the Press/Union Leader/Facebook debate, and watch along with us starting at 9 AM Eastern time.

On Sunday’s Meet The Press, David Gregory called out surging Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on a speech he gave last month to a Republican Jewish Coalition Candidates Forum, comparing President Obama‘s foreign policy to appeasement during World War II. “How can that possibly be accurate, if you take an objective look at the foreign policy of this administration? What on Iran, specifically, separates the approach that President Obama has taken and that of President Bush?”

Could Chris Christie still become the Republican nominee? Tom Brokaw thought that if the nomination process resulted in a brokered convention, pressure would be put on the New Jersey Governor to jump in the race.

Although not as flashy as the newsletter controversy, here’s a fascinating curio from Dr. Paul’s political closet: in a Christmastime appearance on Meet The Press in 2007, Paul said that Abraham Lincoln should never have started the Civil War, instead ending slavery by having the federal government purchase all of the slaves and set them free. Like many libertarian ideas, it’s appealing unless you think about it for five seconds.

Call it the leading edge of the Mitt-storm. Following a blistering “attack ad” that contained no actual attacks, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney unleashed the hounds this morning, releasing a web ad, called “With Friends Like Newt,” which attacks former House Speaker Newt Gingrich over his criticism of the Sacred Paul Ryan Budget™. Conveniently, Gingrich already responded to this ad in May, preemptively calling it “a falsehood.”

Romney’s ad is notable both for the sinister attack-ad boilerplate that he throws in, and the awkward things he leaves out.

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, senior adviser to President Obama‘s reelection campaign David Axelrod was asked by David Gregory to respond to NJ Gov. Chris Christie‘s rant about President Obama earlier this week. Axelrod pointed out that Christie endorsee Mitt Romney opposed saving the auto industry, telling Gregory, “I don’t think he’s in a position to talk about who was a bystander.”

The man who has been catapulted into the spotlight as the single most important political character in the collapse of the Congressional Supercommittee on the budget is still saying no to any and all taxes. Grover Norquist the Americans for Tax Reform head who, despite not being a public servant or member of the media, keeps having fingers pointed at him for pulling the strings in the Republican Congress was on Meet the Press today and explained, once again, that his tax pledge was not with him but “the American people”

In an interview for NBC News’  web-only Meet The Press ”Press Pass,” former lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff, now a self-styled reformer, told host David Gregory that surging GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich‘s involvement with Freddie Mac constitutes “corruption,” and said of Gingrich’s presidential bid, “I don’t know if he’ll survive this.”

On Sunday morning’s Meet The Press, host David Gregory told his panel that senior White House adviser David Plouffe “broke new ground” in attacking GOP establishment presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as having “no core.”

Republican panelist Mike Murphy thought Plouffe owed Romney an apology, while Tom Brokaw pointed out that “the record is there,” but they’re all really late to the party here.

On Friday, Meet The Press host David Gregory promoted the idea that “the President got everything he wanted and it didn’t work,” in an appearance on Morning Joe, and Mediaite challenged the accuracy of that claim. Sunday morning, Gregory changed his tune, somewhat, while interviewing senior White House adviser David Plouffe for Meet The Press, playing the Mitch McConnell quote again, but heavily disclaiming his questions to Plouffe. Even when “working the ref” works, though, it doesn’t always really “work.”

Ron Paul told David Gregory on this morning’s Meet The Press that he believed troops would ultimately never leave Iraq in response to President Obama‘s announcement that all soldiers stationed there would be coming home by year’s end. “We’ll change their names,” said Paul. “I mean, they’ve already admitted there (still) will be 15,000 but, you know, they’ve morphed the private sector with the military. The CIA and contractors, it’s a mixture.

Yesterday we brought you a clip from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s appearance on Meet the Press (short story: like so many others, he’s a Chris Christie fan). However, there was another interesting moment in the program. In it, Bloomberg weighed in on the month’s big issue of contention, raising taxes on the rich, and came out strongly against the President Obama’s so-called “Buffett Rule.”

On Meet The Press today, David Gregory and panel looked at Governor Rick Perry‘s strong lead in Republican party polls, and discussed the impact of his campaign on the future of the GOP.

August is turning out to be a month dedicated in the media to hammering President Obama on his jobs policy– which, coincidentally, he has yet to release in any detail. On today’s Meet the Press, Robert Gibbs argued that the President had his hands tied by Congress on the jobs issue and that the economy was in too dire a situation to solve immediately, but host Savannah Guthrie continued to push him, reminding him polls showed the American people dissatisfied with the President’s performance and yearning for a concrete plan.

Rachel Maddow appeared on the Meet the Press roundtable and added some fireworks as she declared that the S&P downgrade was an indictment of Republican’s negotiating strategy throughout the debt crisis and how they believe that “any deal is a bad deal.” Now she hopes that this can serve as a political wake-up call to convince everyone that Washington is simply not working.

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.

NBC’s Meet the Press will host a “Facebook debate” ahead of the New Hampshire primary, host David Gregory announced in a web video (suitable for sharing on Facebook) posted today. Gregory described it as a “one of a kind experience” that starts “right now” with an ongoing political discussion of the 2012 campaign on the MTP Facebook page and leading up to the debate, to happen the Sunday before the primary. The debate will happen, Gregory says, “not just on air, but within your social network.”

Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty is eager to add some excitement back to his campaign, and this morning on Meet the Press he may have found just the ticket: going on the attack. In Pawlenty’s crosshairs was fellow presidential candidate Michele Bachmann who Pawlenty dismissed as having no successes in Congress that would make her more worthy than him of being elected President.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appeared on Meet the Press to speak about his success on budgetary issues in New Jersey, to admit he’s not loved by all, and to not back down from his recent declaration to a constituent that some issues are “none of your business.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham agrees that President Obama has not been a decisive or clear leader when it comes to American involvement in Libya; however, he distinguishes himself in a major way from congressional Republicans like Speaker of the House John Boehner, who are suggesting the use of the War Powers Act to threaten an end to the Libyan military operation. Graham’s simple and blunt advice: “Congress should sort of shut up and not empower Gaddafi.”

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her new sparring partner Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus appeared together on Meet the Press this morning. Yet unlike the bipartisan agreement on Face the Nation regarding the Anthony Weiner scandal, the two party chairs were quick to point the finger at one another regarding which party has worse leadership.

President Obama’s recent speech on the Middle East was highlighted by his call for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders before the Six-Day War in which Israel occupied land in Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. Obama believes that any meaningful negotiation for peace requires an acknowledgment of those old borders, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes those borders are indefensible and many Republicans don’t think Israel should have to give up any more than it already has. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell weighed in on the debate and suggested that of all people it was Netanyahu not showing Obama respect.

Newt Gingrich has been forced to backtrack a bit on some of the comments he made yesterday on Meet the Press. If you need any explanation as to why, the reaction of one Rush Limbaugh says pretty much all you need to know. Presumably speaking for a number of conservatives who have watched the interview, Limbaugh said it was “inexplicable” and that he wasn’t even going to begin to try and explain what Gingrich was talking about.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich released a video on YouTube this morning entitled “I oppose the Obamacare mandate. Period.” As the title suggests, he makes it plain and simple that he completely opposes a “mandate on individuals.” However, some people are pointing out that this seems to go against a stance he held in the past, both in previous years and, well, yesterday on Meet the Press.

National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, making the rounds of the Sunday shows, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to discuss the large amount of data recovered in the raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. While Americans have been treated to video of bin Laden the (non)couch potato channel-surfing from his creepy uncle den, Donilon told David Gregory that there’s a lot more where that came from, and summed it up colorfully, saying of the find, “”It’s about the size, the CIA tells us, of a small college library.”