The video the GOP wouldn't want you to see

Two veteran GOP operatives didn't realize their mics were on when they said what they really thought of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as U.S. Sen. John McCain's pick for vice president.

Gimmicky? Political B.S.? It's over?

That's a rated-pg version of what former George H.W. Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan and ex-McCain aide Mike Murphy said on MSNBC. Their candid comments are fast becoming a YouTube moment they'll regret. Caution: mild language alert.

Transcript here on Talking Points Memo.

At The Swamp, Chicago Tribune bloggers compare Noonan's words with what she wrote today for the Wall Street Journal. Slightly different take.

UPDATE: Noonan has just addressed the open-mic-insert-foot episode in the Journal Online. She says that after the tape got out, friends e-mailed her, questioning why she thought the election was 'over.' She says this:

Here I must plead some confusion. In our off-air conversation, I got on the subject of the leaders of the Republican party assuming, now, that whatever the base of the Republican party thinks is what America thinks. I made the case that this is no longer true, that party leaders seem to me stuck in the assumptions of 1988 and 1994, the assumptions that reigned when they were young and coming up. "The first lesson they learned is the one they remember," I said to Todd -- and I'm pretty certain that is a direct quote. But, I argued, that's over, those assumptions are yesterday, the party can no longer assume that its base is utterly in line with the thinking of the American people. And when I said, "It's over!" -- and I said it more than once -- that is what I was referring to. I am pretty certain that is exactly what Todd and Murphy understood I was referring to.

She says what went out on the Web was truncated.

Either way, she takes a few more words to explain before landing at this bottom line:

 I suspect, as I say further in here, that her candidacy will be either dramatically successful or a dramatically not; it won't be something in between.

Not as succinct as her famous "Read my lips!" but you get the point.