I wonder, gentle reader, why the Screaming Right-Wing Brigade has cut the amount of saturation coverage they've been giving the “Benghazi-gate” story that they’ve been inflicting on us for weeks, in favor of a five-year-old video of Obama accusing the Bush government of shortchanging Katrina victims. I mean, the Libya story has murder and terrorists and threats to the free world; the Katrina video just has Obama praising Jeremiah Wright. Anyway, last night on On the Record Sarah Palin also brought up that 2007 Katrina video, and treated us to the spectacle of Palin accusing the President of playing chameleon and having no core convictions, while simultaneously cheerleading for Mitt Romney, the biggest chameleon in politics.

Obama’s Katrina speech was in order to race bait, Palin began. “He played chameleon again and engaged in deception when he again said what he thought people wanted to hear because Barack Obama seems to have no core convictions that match what America needs today to restore our exceptionalism. And part of that exceptionalism is equal opportunity for all for success.”

Hmmm. Romney said on Wednesday night that he wouldn’t cut taxes for the rich. He just flip-flopped on the “47%” video. So who's the real chameleon without core convictions? If that thought ran through Van Susteren’s mind, she didn’t take it up. Instead she encouraged while Palin gloated over Romney’s debate win - or rather, over Obama’s loss. “[Obama] can't defend his record… So he was kind of lost in having any strong core conviction about why it is that he should be reelected. So you couple that with the fact that he didn't have a teleprompter in front of him and he didn't have the filter of the liberal media protecting him and kind of coddling him and ushering him through a debate, a venue that he is so used to. So the candidness, the reality that really hit home for all those millions of viewers was very healthy for democracy… Hopefully, Governor Romney will really be able to hammer home his -- his plan for sudden and relentless reform of the federal government to shrink it and make it really as irrelevant as possible in our lives.” (Frankly, the prospect of Romney being as irrelevant as possible has some attraction to it…)

 Finally, Van Susteren asked Palin what, as a veteran of vice-presidential debates, was her advice to Paul Ryan in his upcoming one-on-one with Biden?: “Paul Ryan needs to take the gloves off, too, and really hammer home some details about Joe Biden's record, you know…" particularly on energy issues. Then she took the opportunity to vent some personal bitterness. “And then after the debate, Paul Ryan just needs to watch his back. That's my advice, because you know, if things don't go his way, people will be looking for a scapegoat.”  

On that note, Van Susteren closed the interview.