On “Meet the Press” today, all pretense was gone and diplomacy jettisoned as Obama placed the blame for a potential cliff dive squarely on Republican intransigence. “The only thing I would caution against, David, is I think this notion of, ‘Well, both sides are just kind of unwilling to cooperate.’ And that's just not true,” Obama told host David Gregory.

“I mean if you look at the facts, what you have is a situation here where the Democratic Party, warts and all, and certainly me, warts and all, have consistently done our best to try to put country first,” he added, paraphrasing John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign slogan. The clear implication: Republicans have not put country first, prioritizing ideology instead.

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"I think there are a vast majority of responsible gun owners out there who recognize that we can't have a situation in which somebody with severe psychological problems is able to get the kind of high capacity weapons that this individual in Newtown obtained and gun down our kids. And, yes, it's going to be hard," Obama told host David Gregory, recalling the day he heard of the murder of 20 children in Connecticut as the worst day of his presidency.

Obama also discussed fiscal cliff negotiations. He repeatedly placed the blame on Republicans for failure to reach a compromise, noting the GOP "had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers." In contrast, the president defended his own record of spending cuts, telling Gregory:

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“I really think what David Gregory did while he was inadvertently flouting the law was illustrating in a very graphic, perhaps not intentionally, but in a graphic way just how silly some of these laws are,” NRA President David Keene said yesterday. We don’t often say this, but the NRA is absolutely right.

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Gregory was aggressively questioning LaPierre about whether he would support any new gun control laws when he may have run afoul of some which already exist in the District of Columbia.

And now, according to a report in Politico, Washington, D.C., police are investigating.

“The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating this matter,” said police officer and spokesman Araz Alali in an interview Tuesday. “There are D.C. code violations, D.C. code restrictions on guns, ammunition. We are investigating this matter. Beyond the scope of that, I can’t comment any further,” he said.

As Politico notes, D.C. has a restrictive gun control law -- and it's possible that whoever purchased or possessed the magazine could have crossed the line.

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“It's the one thing that would keep people safe,” LaPierre continued of his plan, “I said what I honestly thought and...what hundreds of millions of people all over this country believe will actually make a difference." All the evidence available suggests putting armed guns in school is actually not a particularly effective idea (there was an armed Sheriff’s deputy in Columbine High School on the day of the shooting, for instance).

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“If it’s crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” LaPierre said. “I know there’s a media machine in this country that wants to blame guns every time something happens."

Asked by Gregory about specific changes to gun control laws that might have made it harder for Adam Lanza to kill 26 people a week ago Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary school, LaPierre discounted all of them.

"I don't believe that's going to make one difference," he said, when Gregory held up a magazine that allowed Lanza to get off dozens of shots without reloading, and asked whether fewer people might have died if that was banned.

"There are so many ways he could have done it," LaPierre said.

He put the blame on the mentally ill -- and said "we have no national database of these lunatics," and that "these monsters walk the street," he said, because too many have been deinstitutionalized.

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Every Sunday morning, the big four broadcast networks all air their FCC-mandated "public affairs" programming, which consists of a host (a white guy) interviewing the same dozen lawmakers, journalists and pundits in a rotating order. The lawmakers are usually not the most powerful members of Congress -- often they're somewhat marginal figures in terms of influence, in fact -- and the pundits and journalists all generally share the same, or very similar, worldviews. The only people I actually know who watch these things do so out of professional obligation.

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"A note here this morning: We reached out to all 31 pro-gun rights senators in the new Congress to invite them on the program to share their views on the subject this morning," he said. "We had no takers."

Since Adam Lanza shot 20 children and 6 adults dead with a semiautomatic, few defenders of gun rights have spoken publicly as cries for greater gun control have amplified. On Sunday, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, was the lone pro-gun voice to grace the talk show circuit. He said on "Fox News Sunday" that Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung should have been armed:

"I wish to god she had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids," Gohmert said.

Watch Gohmert's comments, via Fox News:

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Following the horrifying murder of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school, the debate over gun control has reached fever pitch. Following the mass shooting in July at a Colorado movie theater, Feinstein also called for the ban on assault weapons to be renewed (it was introduced by Bill Clinton in 1994 but has since expired). Feinstein noted that she and her colleagues had been working on the bill for a year, not only in the wake of the Newtown massacre.

Feinstein's new bill will  "ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession [of assault weapons], not retroactively, but prospectively, And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets. So there will be a bill," she said Sunday.

[h/t Huffpo]

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"Every Republican should focused on what we just talked about," Gingrich told David Gregory on Meet the Press. "I mean, if their competitor in '16 ia going to be Hillary Clinton, supported by Bill Clinton, and presumably a still relatively popular President Barack Obama, trying to win that will be truly the Superbowl. And the Republican party today is incapable of competing at that level."

Watch, via Mediaite:

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"I met him for the first time this morning," McCaskill said of the Americans for Tax Reform leader. "Nice to meet him. But, you know, who is he?"

People like Norquist, McCaskill concluded, almost make her feel sorry for John Boehner. "There is incredible pressure on him from a base of his party that is unreasonable about this. And he's got to decide: Is his speakership more important, or is the country more important?"

Norquist, meanwhile, compared the president to a big baby. "It's the president who's threatening to raise taxes on the middle class if he doesn't stamp his feet and get his way," he said.

The solution: C-SPAN!

"He should get into a room with C-SPAN cameras there and negotiate, so instead of hearing rhetoric like this -- that was all show, no economics. Let's have it in front of C-SPAN cameras," Norquist said. "And if the Republicans are being reasonable, we'll see that. If they're not, we'll see that. You've got to have cameras in that room; none of this press releases after."

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O'Brien referenced today's clip of the comic on "Meet the Press's" Press Pass series, in which Sudeikis discussed the relationship between politics and comedy with co-star Fred Armisen, who played Barack Obama on SNL. Sudeikis called Romney disappointingly corny, saying, "That's us wishing he was aware of how corny he is. ... He is as bland as bland can be, at this point. He's like a butter sandwich. Unsalted butter. With the crusts cut off."

Watch the full discussion with David Gregory, below:

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Iran

Fox News Sunday saw Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tow a hawkish line on Iran, calling the crippling program of sanctions currently in place a "miserable failure." "Time for talking is over he said," echoing Bibi Netanyahu's call for the U.S. to draw "red lines" over Iran's nuclear ambitions. "We should be demanding transparency and access to their nuclear program," Graham said.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) defended the sanctions program against Graham's attacks, "There's unrest in the streets of Tehran and the leaders in Iran are feeling it," he said.

David Axelrod echoed Durbin's point during his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," "They're [Tehran is] feeling the heat. And that's what the sanctions were meant to do. So if they're sensible, they're looking at that and saying it's time to set aside our nuclear ambitions and save our economy."

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- Obama's campaign advisers took the opportunity to defend his debate performance. On ABC's "This Week," Robert Gibbs attacked Romney, saying that in the debate Obama was up against "a clone that looked a lot like Mitt Romney, that had walked away from fundamentally every position he has taken."

"If you're willing to say anything to get elected president … how can they trust you if you are elected president?" Gibbs said.

Gibbs also said that "it's not rocket science to believe that the president's disappointed" in his performance.

David Axelrod had a similar take on "Face the Nation." "I'm saying [Romney] was dishonest in his answers," Axelrod said. "You can characterize that any way you want."

He also added that the "president is his harshest critic" when it comes to analyzing his debate performance.

- RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was busy managing everyone's expectations, saying on CNN's "State of the Union" that he wasn't sure if the Romney campaign could match Obama's $181 million fundraising haul in September. “I don’t know if we’re going to match it, but it is an impressive number,” he said.

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On NBC's "Meet the Press," Christie suggested that the debate could be a game-changer: "Wednesday night, Mitt Romney's going to be standing on the same stage as the president of the United States. And I am telling you... come Thursday morning, the entire narrative of this race is going to change."

White House adviser Plouffe, also appearing on "Meet the Press," predicted a strong performance from Romney. "Challengers tend to benefit from debates. We had expected all along that Governor Romney will have a good night. He's prepared more than any candidate in history," he said.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan said pretty much the exact opposite of Christie's point, telling "Fox News Sunday", "I don't think one event will make or break this campaign."

Watch Plouffe's debate expectations, via "Meet the Press," NBC:

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• On "Face the Nation," conservative op-ed writer and Romney critic Peggy Noonan said Republicans thanked her for her critical column in private:"I will tell you, Bob, it was very interesting. There was a lot of formal official and public blowback from the Romney campaign, from Romney surrogates, et cetera. What was interesting to me, however, was that privately, the constant communication I got was, thank you for saying that they need help at the Romney campaign, they need to be woken up, they need to raise their game."

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