"The reality is that McCain should be proud that he helped salvage a disastrous situation by pushing the counterinsurgency plan. It's something to run on. But, at this point, McCain must sense that it's not a winning hand. Obama, the poker player, has drawn to an inside straight: the Iraqis favor his plan over McCain's long-term bases. That must be galling. But it's no excuse to pop off the way McCain did. It was, shockingly, unpresidential."

Now, Peggy later came out and said she wasn't talking about the entire McCain campaign, but a certain kind of attitude-- "that whatever the base of the Republican party thinks is what America thinks." But we have her here, overheard on live mic, and her tone is unmistakable. Utterly contemptuous, angry and sure. "It's Over." She said. That rage wasn't about an attitude.

Mike Murphy, in conversation with Peggy, above. "You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical."

"For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?"

In May 2006, after McCain had courted the Rev. Jerry Falwell in an effort to win conservative support, I asked him if he was bending his principles for the sake of winning. "I don't want it that badly," McCain answered. "I will continue to do what is right. . . . If that means I can't get the Republican nomination, fine. I've had a happy life. The worst thing I can do is sell my soul to the devil."

He was right.

"And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both."

"It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?"

"Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country."

"If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."

"Krauthammer's Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game. John McCain, unfortunately, has already thrown three."

"John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, "We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us." This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic".

Saying that Palin was a "net negative" on the ticket, he went on: "[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with... He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that."

"When I got on the plane the other day, McCain said hi to me. . . .

When he had that conflict with that crowd in Minneapolis, or Lakeview, that really energized him. Going on offense against his own voters and supporters in this weird way made him more energetic. . . .

Some of the happiest times I had with John McCain are when everyone counted him out."

"In the 2008 race, and especially in the past few weeks, the imbalance has become unnervingly stark. Ideological differences aside, John McCain's campaign has been more dishonest, more unfair, more -- to use a word that resonates with McCain -- dishonorable than Barack Obama's."

Josh on Ruth:

"Is Ruth Marcus really so desperate to 'even the scales' that she's claiming that the phrase "privatizing Social Security" is "incendiary" language that amounts to deception?"

"This was not evident back in the "fierce urgency of now" days, but it is now. And it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather -- already has gathered -- some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem."

And Then Later...

"McCain has not made that sort of all-encompassing argument, so his proposals don't add up to more than the sum of their parts,"

Still later: "When I think of him at his happy times, he's leaning back he's joking around... And the guy you see in this debate... That's not the guy. Check out the video below, and hear how his voice cracks when he says guy.

I don't believe he would sit where you're sitting and call his opponent, or say his opponent called his runningmate a "pig." I don't believe he would say that."

"Well you [Gen. Wes Clark] went so far as to say that you thought John McCain was quote, and these are your words, "untested and untried" and I must say I came to read that twice because you're talking about somebody who was prisoner of war, he was a squadron commander, the largest squadron of the Navy, he's been on the Senate Armed Services Commitee for lo these many years. How can you say that John McCain is "untested and untried," General?"

"I have a, maybe a counter-intuitive view, that John McCain also doesn't like this kind of politics, went along with his tougher political advisers... I think hes inside a bubble and is not aware... I think he's been jinned up a little bit." Roger Simon and Mike Barnicle concur.

"Well look for Bill Clinton, and for anyone in the Democratic party for that matter, its a very tricky case taking on John McCain and trying to rough him up. When John McCain was sitting in a prison in Hanoi, Bill Clinton was writing letters to his ROTC commander and trying to get out of the draft, which he did successfully."

"What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads -- they're doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he's been good at in the past -- running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They're happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free."

"John McCain's campaign is pretty much a shambles right now.

If you don't believe me, just listen to John McCain. His chief goal these days is calming down his crowds, not firing them up.

And that is an honorable thing to do. It may not be a winning thing to do. But it is honorable."