Keeping a meme aloft is hard work in America’s constantly shifting political landscape. David “Axe” Axelrod must have thought the “Mitt’s weird!” message was in danger of sinking below the waves of Minnesota Not-Nice during yesterday’s FOX/GOP (but I repeat myself) debate in Iowa.

So Body Spray Dave did what all good campaign advisers do: he went on Morning Joke to “tamp down” the rumors that the Obama campaign, bereft of a decent economy or a motivated base, would organize itself around Mitt’s weirdness. With Michael Steele and, later, MJoe:

STEELE: Do you think taking it to the level of referring to Romney or any of the Republican candidates as “weird,” is that more personal or is that more a reality in terms of an issue you want to talk about? How do you guys plan to really define this discussion if the team is already throwing out stuff, we want to show America he’s weird. How about we just speak to the issues?

AXELROD: Michael, lets you and I make common cause right now. No one on my team believes that. And anyone who purports to be a source within the Obama camp who used that term and some of the other terms that were in that story according to unnamed sources should be ripped out of whoever’s Rolodex considers them sources. That doesn’t reflect our thinking. We have real legitimate differences with Mitt Romney, some of which I just spoke about.
.
.
.
SCARBOROUGH: If the President found out or you found out or the Chief of Staff found out that somebody working for President Obama was trying to take that tack, would you all fire them?

AXELROD: I would — if someone used words like ‘weird,’ I would certainly do that, yes.

Which means that sound you hear is about a dozen Rolodex cards getting torn up (is there an app for that? because people don’t actually have Rolodexes anymore, right?) in about a hundred different “newsrooms.”

Is this simply an attempt by Body Spray Dave to keep the meme aloft another news cycle, going into the crucial weekend of the Iowa straw poll? Or does he really not want the folks who revealed Team Obama’s re-election strategy to Politico talking to the media any longer?

Well, this is embarrassing for Team Obama: the resident right-wing bomb-thrower on The View, who campaigned alongside Sarah Palin in 2008, has said she supports something called "gay marriage" — which I presume is what the rest of us call marriage equality. This puts her to the left of President Obama.

I am not ultra-ultra-conservative on every issue. I actually support gay marriage…. I think the gay marriage thing would definitely surprise people. I mean, for some people, it will surprise them to the point that they won’t want to hear it.

No matter how much Team Obama wants to avoid talking about marriage equality, through 2012 if possible, it’s the issue that’s on every activists’ radar now, and not just in the coastal elite states. Too many states have taken equality hits through battles over constitutional amendments defining marriage.

It’s as if the entire LGBT community nationwide is looking to the White House for leadership on this — and we’re only getting leadership from two odd-couple lawyers, two same-sex California couples, and a "progresive activist San Francisco judge."

Kerry Eleveld at The Advocate explains that while state-based LGBT organizations may have cut the Administration some slack on some of "our issues," the one place they stood their ground in an August meeting was on marriage equality:

Why? Because on that issue state activists have been the proverbial tip of the spear, if you will. They may not have a front-row seat to the maddening process of trying to chisel equality from the gut of an ossified federal government, but state-by-state they have shed blood, sweat, and tears for the recognition of their love and their families.

No one more clearly conveyed this point to me than Michael Kenny of the Florida Together Federation, who was at the White House briefing.

“We want and deserve absolute full marriage equality, and we’re not going to be satisfied until the president is advocating for it himself,” Kenny said. “It’s heartbreaking because we fought marriage amendments here in ’08 and we were really in the trenches. We made personal sacrifices for months and in some cases years, and then we watched discrimination be enshrined in the state constitution.”

Make no mistake, this is an issue that the president’s chief advisers have misjudged from day one. They underestimated how angry people were that candidate Barack Obama wasn’t more vocal in his opposition to Proposition 8; they dismissed the devastation felt by millions of queers who poured their hearts into electing Obama only to watch Prop. 8 proponent Rick Warren give the invocation at the inauguration; they remained silent in 2009 as gay Mainers fought to preserve their right to love, marry, and build a life with their partner; and then David Axelrod reassured the nation two weeks ago that the president still opposes granting the freedom to marry to all Americans.

Misjudging supporters’ expectations seems to have become a rather specialized skill within this White House. I have to wonder, as right-wing darlings like Elizabeth Hasselbeck take up the ‘gay marriage’ issue, who is going to be left behind? Is there a place for LGBT Americans outside the Democratic party?

Robert Gibbs goes way out on a limb to discuss the meeting David Axelrod had with Elizabeth Warren at the White House, last question in Friday’s press "conference" which lately seem to be Gibbs’ attempts at stand-up.

"Obviously, look — obviously, she WAS here."

No personnel announcements on this position in the coming week, Gibbs says. So, The Professional Left, you get another week to pummel the president over appointing Liz Warren to head the office she imagined that’s now been signed into law.

I wonder what other horrors, whether at Gitmo or Bagram or via drone in Pakistan, or perhaps closer to home in the Gulf, this Administration has planned for the coming week that they want The Professional Left’s focus to be on Elizabeth Warren’s appointment, or nomination, or non-appointment. Will Obama appoint her? Should he appoint her? Why hasn’t he appointed her?

Is Liz Warren’s nomination & appointment becoming the bright shiny thing we’re supposed to pay attention to while other, much more nefarious things, like the 75th anniversary of Social Security for instance, are slipped over the transom on News Dump Friday without any comment whatsoever?

"She WAS here."