While discussing the success of Sarah Palin's book Mike Murphy echoes David Brooks with his statement that "the noisiest parts of kind of the conservative media machine have far less influence than the mainstream media machine that covers the Republican world thinks they do". Murphy needs to tell that to those sour-grapes Palin voters hitting those tea bag protests across the country. I also wonder if he thinks there's a difference between the "conservative media machine" and Fox News?
Rachel Maddow rightly points out they're not going to be able to dismiss Palin that easily and need to answer for the brand of conservatism that has elevated her to the position she has in the party, 2012 nominee or not.
MURPHY: No, she will sell a lot. I'm, I'm going to buy it. I'm going to wait for it to get spell-checked, but then I'm going to buy it.
GREGORY: Right. And she's number--I should point out, I mean, number one on the best-seller list for Amazon.
MURPHY: Yeah. No, no, look, she has a constituency. She'll never be the nominee, I totally agree with David. I agree with Steve Schmidt, it would be actually a disaster if she was the nominee. I do wish my friend Steve felt that a year ago when a lot of people were asking John McCain to put her on the ticket. But the truth is--and I'm going to agree with David here, too--the noisiest parts of kind of the conservative media machine have far less influence than the mainstream media machine that covers the Republican world thinks they do. These radio guys can't deliver a pizza, let alone a nomination. And you can case study that out in the last election. So I--the question is whether or not our party will learn, when we have a pretty good midterm victory due to Obama's mistakes this time, that turning up the volume is not the reason that we're going to do well, I believe, in the midterms. And the fact is to get all the way, there are a lot of things we have to do to modernize conservatism to be successful.
MADDOW: I, I do think that there's a little bit of reckoning that needs to happen on the right for Sarah Palin's success. I mean, she was the vice presidential nominee, she is going to sell a kazillion books and she is the biggest brand name in Republican politics still right now. And she's chose--the person who's writing her book, her last--the last person who she co-authored a book with was called "Donkey Cons" and it was co-authored with a guy who's widely believed to be and I believe him to be a white supremacist. So she's chosen Lynn Vincent, who's written a book with a white supremacist, to write her book, and she's the biggest name in Republican politics.
MURPHY: Oh, but, Rachel...
MADDOW: And you can dismiss her and say she's not going to be the nominee, but I do think the right needs to sort of answer for what's happened to conservatism.
MURPHY: But let me just say, I am a well-documented nonfan of Sarah Palin, at least as a national politician. I don't know her personally. But that's guilt by association stuff. That's the cable stuff. That's the problem.
MADDOW: But why would you--you can pick anybody to be your ghostwriter.
MURPHY: Sarah Palin's a lot of things, but she's not a white supremacist. And...
MADDOW: You could--no, I don't think she is. But when you can pick anybody, why would she pick somebody who's associated with the League of the South, who said that Americans are revolted by the idea of having a black sister-in-law. I mean, she--this is who she picked to write her book.
MURPHY: Yeah, but there's...
MADDOW: Why do you do that?
MURPHY: That's sort of guilt by association stuff, which I don't know and it can--I--check it out.
MADDOW: It's guilt by choice. It's guilt by choice.
GREGORY: OK.
