Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs‘ appearance on Tuesday’s Morning Joe evoked a strong sense of déjà vu. Time‘s Mark Halperin asked Gibbs about a familiar line of attack on President Obama, noting that GOP hopeful Rick Perry (R-TX) responded to a reporter who asked him if the President loved America by saying, “You need to ask him.”

Gibbs called Perry’s “passion” for America a “remarkable turnaround” from his not-so-distant talk of secession from the United States.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former Bush communications director Nicole Wallace described the arrival of Gov. Rick Perry in the Republican presidential field as “that tall, ice cold glass of water” that Republicans were “crawling through the sand ready to reach for.” Wallace says for Republicans, it’s been refreshing to see Perry out at campaign events “answering all the questions,” comparing his performance to that of Tim Pawlenty, who Wallace said drove some in the GOP to frustration. “You just wanted to shake him and say, ‘you’re in third place, just answer the questions.’”

The recent appointment of former Time magazine reporter Jay Carney as White House Press Secretary has already spawned an effort to discredit Carney, and his former colleagues, by right-wing media watchdog Newsbusters. The right’s answer to Media Matters has released what it calls a “Media Bias Dossier” on Carney, but at eight quotes in a twenty-year career, it’s pretty thin gruel. It might also surprise Newsbusters to know that libeeral watchdog Media Matters has an even thicker “dossier” on Carney, and that Redstate’s Erick Erickson is among Carney’s biggest fans.

Nicole Wallace, the McCain adviser who came under a great deal of fire in Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue and then and leveled some of her own in the aftermath, has some nice things to say about Todd Palin, as well as some alarming admissions about his wife Sarah.

WaPo reporter Anne Kornblut’s new book about women in politics hits shelves today. In an excerpt that captures the McCain campaign right before it made a left turn into Bizarro world senior McCain staffer Nicole Wallace recounts the first time she was contacted by a “real” reporter regarding the maternity of Trig Palin.