How rich that she read her talk in a sing-song voice as she ripped Barack Obama for using a Teleprompter. Once she left the speech for the Q&A, she really went off-message, as well as nearly off-English.  (Even though it looked like, at one point, she was reading answers off of her hand.) "They're not knowin what are we gonna do if we don't have Tea Party support" was one of my favorite head-scratchers, a great echo of "when Putin rears his head."

But it was also in her brief Q&A that she made one comment she might regret, if anyone in the Republican Party ever held her accountable. She told the crowd her husband Todd -- according to recently released emails, the non-elected former governor of Alaska -- is "much too independent" to be a Republican, because he's even "more conservative" than she is. What a great way to revisit the controversy over Todd's membership in the secessionist Alaska Independent Party! Remember how Palin dogged poor McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, trying to get him to denounce Salon's reporting on the Palins and AIP? She tried to get Schmidt to lie and say her husband checked the AIP box on voter forms mistakenly, and he refused. Now she's bragging her husband isn't a Republican because he's so "independent."

She lied about rejecting stimulus money for Alaska (apparently she rejected a small home-weatherization project, which as it is sounds kind of mean for the governor of Alaska.) She lied about Obama's position on terrorism and the Christmas Day would-be bomber. She mixed up Alaska and America at least once. It was hilarious to hear her denounce political "talk, talk, talk" and also brag about the job she did as governor, when in fact she quit that job to talk, talk, talk, for money, at wine shows and for-profit tea parties and of course for Fox News.

I have to say, I've been assuming Palin probably won't run for president, and that she quit her job as Alaska governor to cash in on her fame. I now feel pretty certain she's trying to do both. She's certainly looking like a grifter, and cashing in at the for-profit Tea Party Nation event, and taking questions from the increasingly despised Phillips, may hurt her politically. But it's now pretty clear to me that in all her narcissism, she thinks she can get rich and run for president at the same time. And who am I to say she can't, given the delusions of her right-wing supporters?

Reagan also, whether I liked it or not -- and I didn't -- created the phenomenon of Reagan Democrats, expanding his party's reach into mine, even into my family, since white working-class ethnics were prime targets for Reagan's roll-back-the-1960s appeal. There aren't many tea party Democrats, although there are some Democrats who are rightfully fed up with their own party's serving their corporate masters. The "purity test" tea party folks are trying not to grow the party, but to shrink it so it fits into a tea bag. I said all that on "Hardball."

Buchanan, not surprisingly, disagreed. But things stayed civil -- we debated the scope and cause of Reagan's tax increases (watch the whole video, below, if you're interested) -- until Buchanan declared he was supporting former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth, an ultra-right birther backer, in his primary challenge against Sen. John McCain. When I called Hayworth a "birther," Buchanan lost it. He yelled at me for "demonizing" the tea party right, and we went at it.

I reminded Buchanan that I covered a local tea party last year and worked hard to acknowledge the economic populism and anti-corporate-bailout sentiment animating some of the demonstrators. Whatever. But my favorite part of the debate was when Buchanan bragged about capturing the George Wallace vote for his boss, Richard Nixon, and I called that the "racist" vote. (For the kids, George Wallace was the Alabama governor who preached "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" and stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent black students from entering in 1963. He ran for president as an independent in 1968 and won five Southern states; Nixon and Buchanan clawed many of his supporters back in 1972, after an assassination attempt put Wallace in a wheelchair.)

Calling the Wallace vote "racist" enraged Buchanan too, and he countered that those racists had voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. I acknowledged many of them did: Johnson lost them when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and he probably knew it at the time, famously remarking (although I can't find a reliable source for the famous remark) that he'd delivered the South to the Republicans for a long time. Right about then Matthews called time on our segment.

You can dismiss this as dumb cable TV chatter, or ancient history, and that's your right. But I would urge you not to do either. By bragging about his success in winning the racist Wallace vote for Nixon way back when, Buchanan is (perhaps unconsciously) admitting the through-line from that racist GOP segment through the birthers and extreme anti-Obama tea partiers of today. It's a remarkable admission. We should pay attention to it.

Here's the video. The fun starts at 8 minutes in:

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Has anyone else noticed that the once-fierce GOP, which used to be (ickily) considered the "Daddy party," strong enough to protect us (the sexist formulation had Democrats as "Mommy," always wanting to take care of us and wipe our noses), lately seems like a bunch of bed-wetters, afraid to let our Democratic institutions work to keep us safe? We've tried hundreds of terrorists in criminal court and convicted them, and they sit in supermax American prisons. Not one has gotten out to terrorize again. But now Republicans are claiming that the policies pursued by Bush and Cheney regarding criminal trials for terrorists aren't enough. We have to be kept even safer! But if we agree to be terrorized by the thought of using our institutions to protect us from terror, well, haven't the terrorists won? I'm confused.

The administration's decision to put money in next year's budget to fund closing Guantánamo is likewise producing some hilarious moments of hypocrisy. One of the biggest hypocrites is John McCain, who called for the closing of Guantánamo on the campaign trail, in March 2008. That was the McCain of integrity; the former prisoner of war and torture victim who could see that Guantánamo had become a symbol of an America gone wrong, a symbol that was hurting us on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and among Muslims generally.

Back then McCain wanted to transfer the Guantánamo detainees to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, but a funny thing happened: Both the state's GOP senators, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, said no. Now the plan is to house them in the near-empty Thomson Correctional Facility, 150 miles outside of Chicago. Local leaders are on board, Ill. Sen. Dick Durbin backs the plan -- but it's become controversial, because Obama's behind it.

So now, his Leavenworth plan scotched by members of his own party, McCain is blasting Obama's Thomson plan. "I have always stated that we need a comprehensive plan to close Guantánamo safely and legally," he said in a statement last month. "The Administration still has not crafted such a plan, and I do not think we should transfer any detainees into the United States until such a plan is presented to the American people and approved by the Congress." Of course, part of developing "such a plan" would involve selecting a site for the detainees and getting it ready, which Obama is doing in his budget. He's not shuttling detainees to Illinois this weekend on Air Force One (stopping maybe at the Super Bowl in New Orleans on the way. "Who dat?" indeed).

And while I'm all for the president conferring with Congress, it should be noted that Bush didn't ask Congress for permission to begin to house captured prisoners, with no charges, at Guantánamo. There are two different sets of rules for Democratic and Republican presidents, and of course the media play along. (Glenn captures my MSNBC friends Chuck Todd, Savannah Guthrie and Mark Whitaker chortling and tsk-tsking over Obama's "self-inflicted wound" in doing with Muhammed what Bush did with Moussaoui. They each know better.)

McCain has changed course on two military issues of late, Guantánamo and "don't ask, don't tell." I'm sure it has nothing to do with having a crazy birther challenger from the right, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth. I'm sure he's just being all mavericky again.

On MSNBC's "The Ed Show" Tuesday, I got to respond to Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, who was kvetching about Miranda rights for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a New York trial for Muhammed and moving Guantánamo detainees to the U.S. Most of it was standard GOP talking points, but he took a nasty swing at Obama, echoing Dick Cheney's vicious claim that Obama is making the country less safe.

I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm always surprised when these people level what is perhaps the worst charge you can against Obama -- that he's making us less safe -- with absolutely zero evidence. Obama called it "rank politics," but it's worst than usual, because it really is playing politics with American security. Ed Schultz said Barrasso's position "floored" him; I replied we shouldn't be floored by anything anymore, because even formerly sane Republicans will do anything to undermine this president. 

I wasn't optimistic about Obama's plans to attend the House GOP gathering. I thought it might be more of his wrongheaded bipartisanship. I didn't raise a ruckus; it was his Friday to spend the way he wanted to. I just didn't expect much.

But like a lot of people in both parties -- especially the House GOP aides who set it up and let the TV cameras roll -- I was honstly blown away by Obama's performance. Like a lot of Democrats, I was very happy to see him engage and question and answer -- and at times kick some ill-informed and obstreperous GOP ass. I tried not to ask where this fighting man had been for these last months; he was clearly that president we voted for and I thought better late than never.

Mike Madden captured it all in (near) real time here. My friend Melissa Harris-Lacewell rewound the film for us, back to her Chicago days with Obama the law professor, to remind us how he and why he pulled today's feat off, here.  She, and I, didn't expect someone who fulfilled all of our progressive political dreams when we voted for him in 2008. But we did expect him to tangle with -- and defeat -- his antagonists, politically, rhetorically, intellectually, sometimes morally, far more often than he has this year. So today was a relief and a revelation for a lot of us.

I am looking forward to seeing a whole lot more of this president in the coming months. Everyone who wants bipartisanship should be calling for monthly sessions like this. Sadly, but not surprisingly, Republicans aren't. GOP Rep. Mike Pence told Hardball's Chris Matthews, shortly after his draining session with the president, that he's not anxious for a rerun.

I'd like to see monthly prime-time Q&As with the president and Congress: with Senate Republicans, as well as with Congressional progressives. Imagine Obama going head to head with public option proponents the way he did with the GOP today. I'd be rooting for his antagonists on that one, but it would be great political theater.

I don't expect Republicans to clamor for more of the drubbing they got today, but Democrats should push for that kind of engagement. I'd sacrifice prime time presidential speeches and press conferences for the give and take of regular Obama/Congress sessions. Any engaged American would. Why wouldn't the GOP?

The best of the speech: In terms of policy, I was glad to see him demand that Congress continue to work on health care reform – though I was a little disturbed he offered no specifics. As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein (who's doing some of the best reporting on health care) Tweeted, "Notably, Obama did not say pass the Senate bill or amend the Senate bill. There's no more clarity on process." And it was a half hour into the speech before he mentioned it.

Obama also made a strong call for imposing fees on banks to repay the TARP program, and the camera shot of Republicans sitting silently, not clapping, will make for great Democratic campaign ads in November. He reaffirmed his commitment to letting the Bush era tax cuts expire (he'd supported that already, but in this climate of Democratic cowardice it was good to hear it again.) He announced a new jobs program, though at $30 billion it falls far short of what's needed. And he recommitted himself to repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- I'm not sure what to make of the scary camera shot of unhappy-seeming Joint Chiefs that followed -- but it's still not clear exactly what he'll do to make that discrimination history.

The worst of the speech: Obama is borrowing too much rhetoric, and policy, from the GOP. He supported his spending freeze by saying "Families across the country are tightening their belts, and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same." That's a disingenuous comparison, and downright dangerous in a recession. The government needs to spend when families can't. Unbelievably, he led his section on energy policy by calling to expand nuclear power, clean coal and offshore drilling – nothing that Sarah Palin could quarrel with. (And still, when he talked about scientific evidence of climate change, he faced grumbles from the GOP side.)

Personally, I enjoyed hearing the president lecture both parties on their responsibility to the American people. To Democrats acting like they're suddenly in the minority since Scott Brown became the 41st Republican senator last week, he said, essentially, "Buck up." In Obama's words: "Democrats, I remind you we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills." Predictably, and justifiably, he was harder on Republicans: "If the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town -- a supermajority -- then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good politics, but it's not leadership. We were sent here to solve problems, not serve our ambitions." But throughout the speech, House Minority Leader John Boehner and his sidekick Eric Cantor sat together smirking like pissy little schoolboys, while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell chuckled at the notion "Just say no" might be bad for the country.

Still, maybe I'm naïve, but there was a fascinating silence in the chamber for the last few minutes of the speech, as Obama continued to remind the Congress of its responsibilities and recommit himself to his agenda. Even Republicans seemed to be listening. He praised "the generations of Americans who did what was hard," adding "We don't quit. I don't quit."

It was a good speech. It was better and tougher than I expected (I didn't expect him to tweak the GOP for playing "Just say no," for instance). But I've swooned over Obama's speeches before. The man can do speeches. He needs to follow this one up with tough action to make his agenda reality before it will really be more than just words to me.