ST. PAUL, Minn.--Looks like someone just got Jesse Jackson'ed.

Here at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, you can't walk from one side of the street to the other without overhearing a loyal party member robotically repeat the key talking point about Sarah Palin: that she's finally "energized" a GOP "base" that was wary, until recently, of John McCain. "It's beyond anything I've seen in politics," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham gushed in an interview yesterday with NEWSWEEK. "Home run. Whatever intensity problem we had is now gone." I've talked to dozens of Republicans who are pumped for Palin, so there's obviously something to this. But the spin ignores a rather inconvenient truth: the pre-Palin base was already behind its nominee. For months now, McCain has typically polled better among Republicans (about 85 percent, on average) than Obama has polled among Democrats (about 75 to 80 percent, on average). The problem is, McCain is currently trailing Obama by about 6 points in the national horse race. Why? Because the Democrats enjoy a 6-to-10-point advantage in party identification. In other words, it doesn't really matter how excited right-wing Republicans are about Palin--there aren't enough of them out there to win on Election Day.

The important question, then, is not whether evangelicals dig Palin's remarks about the Iraq War being "a task from God"--it's whether she will help McCain appeal to moderates. I don't pretend to know the answer to this crucial question. That said, I did happen to stumble across a fascinating snippet of candid commentary this afternoon that hints at why her task may be harder that many mooseburger-obsessed commentators assume. Appearing earlier today on MSNBC, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan and former McCain adviser Mike Murphy were captured during a commercial break on live mics disparaging McCain's decision to pick Palin as his running mate (video above). Asked whether Palin was the most qualified woman [McCain] could have chosen, Noonan scoffed. "The most qualified? No!," she said. "I think they went for this--excuse me--political bulls**t about narratives ... Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it." A longtime McCain loyalist, Murphy agreed. "You know what's really the worst thing about it?" he said. "The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical." "It's over," concluded Noonan.

In one word: ouch.  

The trouble here isn't that the cable and network newsniks will use Murphy and Noonan's trashtalking as a counterpoint to Palin's big acceptance address tonight, playing "it's over" and "this is cynical" on an endless loop alongside images of spunky Sarah speaking at the Xcel Energy Center--even though they will. (Obviously, it carries more weight--and does McCain more damage--when a loyalist [and not a Beltway pundit] characterizes Palin as "cynical" pick, and Murphy's words will undoubtedly undercut tonight's message.) That said, the real long-term worry for Crystal City is that when even a former adviser is seeing cynicism in your candidate's biggest decision to date, a bunch of average, everyday moderates are probably seeing it, too. These are the voters--independents, soft Democrats--who privilege personality over policy. They're also the voters who will decide the election. They won't reject McCain because his No. 2 is further to the right than he is; in fact, they're likely to find her whole "Mooseburger Hockey Mom" persona pretty appealing. But the danger is that if Palin doesn't prove herself to be more than a "bullsh**t" political narrative over the next 60 days, she may become for these voters a living, breathing negation of what they once considered "the greatness of McCain": his "no cynicism" brand.

And if that happens, it is, in fact, over.