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.

In a column called “The Great New Hampshire Heist,” TIME‘s Mike Murphy suggests a possible dark horse candidate swooping to victory in the nation’s first primary: former New York Governor George Pataki. Comparing Pataki’s low profile “caper” to the media spectacle of Sarah Palin‘s bus tour, Murphy argues “Pataki is going to try to steal the New Hampshire primary.”

Like most of the media this week, Bill Maher and his Real Time panel last night spent a great deal of time trying to explain the reasons why the Arizona shootings last week occurred. And while it was clear that Jared Loughner committed the acts because of mental problems, the question was why people like him turn to violence in the first place. One suggestion Maher put on the table: America’s lack of universal health care.

Ah, the importance of one little letter. A couple of days ago, the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association of San Diego County endorsed Meg Whitman, something her senior consultant, Mike Murphy, tweeted out. Whitman’s press secretary, Sarah Pompei, then retweeted Murphy, however, she accidentally cut off one letter from the URL. So, instead of sending Twitter followers [...]

Hat tip to Politico’s Michael Calderone for digging through the web archives for this Sunday’s much talked-about Meet The Press to find this gem: Mike Murphy and Rachel Maddow going off about a prospective Maddow For Senate campaign.

A poll: do you think Maddow would make a good Senator?

Everyone seems to be talking about Glenn Beck these days (including us), but how powerful is he really?

The power of Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others radio hosts was debated today on Meet the Press, in a conversation that also involved some shots at cable news as a whole.

Almost lost in the brouhaha over the reported truce between GE/Keith Olbermann and Fox News/Bill O’Reilly was the news that Olbermann had kicked replacement host Richard Wolffe off of Countdown. Olbermann cited the appearance of a conflict of interest between Wolffe’s consulting job and his duties as a political analyst for MSNBC. But given the landscape of cable news, in which many big name “politicos” consult on the side quietly or not-so-quietly, why was Wolffe singled out?