In today’s New York Times, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol asks:
So Where’s Murphy?
That is to say, why has former McCain strategist Mike Murphy not yet joined John McCain’s presidential campaign? Because Kristol is talking about it, it seems like everyone else is talking about it, but nobody is talking about where Murphy has been recently.
Or where he may very well have been. That would be the Weekly Standard’s blog, where a pseudonymous contributor named Richelieu is thought to be Murphy by several writers in a position to know (or at least fairly suspect) that this is so.
This makes it all the weirder for Dean Barnett, also of the Weekly Standard, to write today at the very same blog:
In the New York Times today, Bill Kristol speculates that Mike Murphy may be about to ride in on his white steed to save the McCain campaign from itself. Maybe he’s right.
Looking through the archives, it turns out that Richelieu has not contributed a post since late June. After several months (since October 2007) of frequent posting, Richelieu’s output slowed to a crawl in mid-May and had nearly ceased altogether by early June.
Mid-May was also about the time where Obama’s nomination finally appeared to be inevitable, and early June was when Sen. Clinton finally dropped out. So did Murphy hang up his pen name just in time to be available to offer his services to McCain? It looks like we just may find out.
Update: Apparently not? Mike Murphy has signed a deal with NBC.