Steve Kornacki discusses House of Cards. (Photo via Salon).

Last week, OTR found ourselves at a “salon” hosted by the pioneering webmag, Salon. The conceit of a “salon” harks back either to French wits gathering to amuse nobility (and one another) or to Viennese coffeehouses where intellectuals would debate philosophy and gossip. In modern-day New York, however, a “salon” is more often a euphemism for “panel discussion.” And Salon’s salon was no exception.

For this particular panel, the soft-spoken Iranian director Ramin Bahrani and Salon film critic Andrew O’Hehir sat on stools at the Soho House, the semi-exclusive clubhouse in the Meatpacking District, where a wall of bookshelves and artfully arranged hardbacks whispered rather than screamed “library room.” Sans microphone, the panel members discussed all the recent films about politics. And sure, there have been a few: Lincoln, Argo, Django, Zero Dark Thirty. Steve Kornacki moderated.

Of course, the panel was set against Mr. Kornacki’s recent job announcement. The day before, MSNBC announced that Mr. Kornacki, a co-host on The Cycle and a senior political writer at Salon (not to mention an alum of these salmon-colored pages), would succeed Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s weekend morning show Up, formerly Up With Chris Hayes.

Mr. Kornacki, who looked nerdy rather than nerdy-chic in a sweater over a collared plaid shirt, jeans and sneakers, became particularly enthusiastic when the topic of House of Cards came up. Understandably, a political writer might see more inaccuracies than the rest of us in such a show. Not only are some of the delegate counts and the ways in which state politics actually work not accurately depicted, he explained, but perhaps most egregiously, the details of an education bill is not actually a major scoop.

“I will cover education on the show I have, I will write about education politics, but I guarantee you that you are not going to go from being a 22-year-old junior reporter in Washington to being the next Bob Woodward by getting the details of an education bill,” Mr. Kornacki said.

“The way that movies portray journalism is always so hilarious,” Mr. O’Hehir agreed. And nobody in the room was going to argue with that.

We caught up with Mr. Kornacki to ask him about his new gig. After apologizing profusely for telling us to go through MSNBC’s PR machine, Mr. Kornacki decided to throw caution to the wind, taking pity on a reporter from his old alma mater.

“The idea of getting up that early and changing my weekend routine dramatically will be an adjustment,” Mr. Kornacki said, adding that he had only found out that he had been tapped for hosting duties the week before the announcement. “It was funny. Generally, I’m the one speculating, so it was very interesting being one of the few people who knew. I just kept quiet and didn’t say anything.”

Mr. Kornacki said he had not yet had a tête-à-tête with Mr. Hayes—partly because of how quickly and unexpectedly the announcement came—but was planning to sit down with his predecessor in the coming days.

“They told me that it’s the first time that MSNBC has kept the name and the franchise alive,” he said. “It’s a tribute to what Chris has done and how much MSNBC believes in it. So to me, it’s take the template they created and use it.”

When asked how the show will change, if at all, Mr. Kornacki was vague. “Obviously, Chris is Chris and I’m me. If I try to be exactly like him, it’s going to fail, so inevitably there are going to be differences,” he said.

KSM: Moving it was "an embarrassment for the Obama administration" because they gave into "Congressional pandering." [New York Times]

2012: Maybe 3rd party candidates weren't huge spoilers after all. [Steve Kornacki]

Deutsche: Prosecutor says defendants "put profit over people." [William Rashbaum]

Threats: Pigs foot sent to Rep. Peter King's office. [AP]

Albany Ethics: Chartock wonders if Cuomo will succeed. [Alanchartock.wordpress.com]

BigApps: NYC gets attention. [CNNmoney]

Cathie Black: Approaching 100 days in office. [Sharon Otterman]

Steve Levy: Not derailing a major redevelopment project. [Rick Brand]

Staff Changes: Rep. Weiner's chief of staff departs; City Hall News names interim editor: Phil Lentz, founding editor of Crain's Insider. [Crain's]

Steve Levy: "My decision was not made lightly," he said. [Newsday]

Steve Levy: Makes you rethink his entire gubernatorial candidacy last year. [Maggie Habeman]

2012: If Trump runs, Kornacki gives up his entire life's savings. [Salon.com]

Census: Asian population increased 32 percent. [Anna Sale]

Census: Littlefield asks why we're losing seats if we're growing in size. [Comments]

Secret Videos: What Joe Strasburg really thinks of Cuomo, Espada. Jimmy Vielkind]

Same-Sex Marriage: Schumer and Gillibrand lend "Washington muscle" to Cuomo's push in Albany. [David Herszenhorn]

Taxes: Skelos says millionaire's tax is "dead." [Karen DeWitt]

Taxes: Ruffalo advocates for it. [Liz Benjamin]

Interviews: John Liu talks to Errol Louis. [NY1]

I’m heading out west to explore Kevin Sheekey’s stealth operations in California (Gavin Newsom for President!), and am under legal obligations to minimize my emailing and blogging activities.

If you have any tips, fund-raising invitations or photos of certain city official golfing on their very own Bermuda islands, email Kornacki at skornacki[at]observer.com.

Romney’s campaign hangs in the balance in next week’s Michigan primary, where anything short of a win will likely mark the end of the line for the former Massachusetts governor. And Thompson’s candidacy will expire unless he can come from way behind to win two Saturdays from now in South Carolina, where the candidates gathered tonight.

Each man faces a decidedly uphill climb, Thompson in particular, and nothing that transpired in tonight’s 90-minute forum, which was broadcast on the Fox News Channel, brought either man much closer to his goal.

The culprit was the surprisingly civil, almost sleepy tone of the proceedings, a marked departure from the heated Saturday and Sunday night debates that preceded the New Hampshire primary. That kind of mood almost always works against challengers, since it minimizes the likelihood that a dramatic or poignant moment—the kind that can quickly reshape mass opinion—will transpire.

Fox’s moderators tried, and mostly failed, to manufacture some confrontation, while Romney, who was on the giving and receiving end of numerous sharp jabs the last time out, seemed reluctant to engage his foes tonight—and they seemed just happy to leave him alone.

In fact, Thompson was the only candidate on stage to take repeated and direct swipes at any of his rivals, singling out Mike Huckabee, and for good reason. Huckabee is at or near the top of most South Carolina polls, so Thompson, who is trying to position himself as the “true” conservative (and southern) candidate in the race, must tear him down if he wants to climb up.

Thompson sparked the only intense exchange of the night early on, ticking off a lengthy list of Huckabee’s supposed crimes against conservatism.

“He would be a Christian leader, but he would also bring about liberal economic policies and a liberal foreign policy,” Thompson said.

Then, after noting Huckabee’s support for a federal ban on smoking, he slammed the former Arkansas governor with words that every southern conservative understands: “So much for states’ rights.” That prompted some of the loudest applause of the night.

However, Huckabee responded deftly, easing some of the tension with a joke about how being attacked is a sign of his success, and then, in his smooth and soothing preacher’s voice, taking the audience on a brief tour of his governorship in Arkansas, starting from the day he took over from a corrupt Democrat who went to jail. He pointed out that he cut taxes “for the first time in 160 years,” and framed his decision to raise others during his tenure as proof that he out his state’s interests over his political ambition.

“What I did was I governed,” he said, “and the people of my state must have liked what I did, because they kept re-electing me.”

On the whole, the exchange probably benefited Thompson more, simply because he was playing offense. But Huckabee defused the situation ably and had winning moments of his own throughout the night, especially when one of the moderators questioned a full-page newspaper ad that he and other religious leaders took out in 1998. It gave Huckabee a perfect opportunity to assert his faith to an appreciative audience.

Given that Huckabee is at or near the top of most South Carolina polls, while Thompson -- who finished well behind Huckabee in Iowa and didn’t even contest New Hampshire -- has slid into single digits, Thompson’s offensive tonight felt like a case of much too little, much too late.

Romney, meanwhile, has a target of his own: John McCain, who is now favored to defeat Romney in Michigan next week. The two mixed it up in their final two New Hampshire debate, when a year’s worth of tension between them seemed to spill over. But tonight Romney made only a half-hearted effort to go after McCain -- even though he might have benefited had he baited McCain into some kind of angry outburst.

Without naming him, Romney did implicate McCain in his call for change in Washington, saying that “if you send the same people back to Washington just to sit in different chairs, nothing will happen.” But their was no aggressive push to throw McCain on defense, and when a moderator raised to subject of immigration -- to the crowd’s fervent applause -- Romney almost seemed to be going through the motions as he raised his by now familiar rhetorical differences with McCain on the subject.

McCain, for his part, resisted taking any shots at Romney, a continuation of the front-runner’s strategy he began employing after last Saturday’s debate, when he risked appearing too nasty after throwing repeated snide comments toward Romney. The toughest moment for McCain tonight came on the immigration question, and his usual defense of his position was greeted with complete silence from the audience.

But he also scored points with conservatives, particularly the no- insignificant chunk of them with military backgrounds in South Carolina, by repeatedly touting his long-standing support for the Iraq war and the troop surge, even using the topic to address a question about the public’s apparent hunger for “change.”

“I’ve helped bring about one of the most important changes of my lifetime,” McCain said, “and that is to reverse a losing strategy in Iraq, which would have entailed the loss of so much American treasure. And now we are succeeding.”

This is a key difference between this iteration of John McCain and the last one, when his signature issue was campaign finance reform, which drove a politically lethal wedge between him and the Republican base. Now it is Iraq and the troop surge he brings up the most, and to many conservatives in the G.O.P., that makes him seem loyal to the party.

Just like this debate didn’t bring Fred Thompson much closer to toppling Mike Huckabee, it’s doubtful Mitt Romney made up much ground on John McCain.

From Kornacki's piece:

He usually writes about national stuff, but don’t let that stop you from emailing him with local tips, photos, invitations, etc at steve.kornacki(at)gmail(dot)com.

I’ll also be emailable and posting sporadically as I pop in and out of my undisclosed location.

Anyway, be nice to him.

Steve Kornacki says that there's nothing gimmicky about Obama's candidacy.

Joe Conason writes that the administration's broad strategy for the Iraq region is no strategy at all.

And Richard Brookhiser thinks that the bad guys in Iraq will have a field day if the American military stops pressing the fight.

-- Josh Benson

Rudy Giuliani used his speech at a fund-raiser for NH state House Republican candidates to tout the importance of electing GOP candidates up and down the ballot and the party's general superiority on every issue imaginable. So I asked him if he still thinks Mario Cuomo would make a better governor than George Pataki:

Giuliani's response:

-- Azi Paybarah