Chris Matthews has a fee-vah and the only prescription is more … Michele Bachmann?

Proof positive of how well she did last night: No one but no one in big media has been more derisive towards her over the last few months than Tingles has, but after listening to the first few minutes of this, he seems perilously close to an Obama-esque leg thrill. Did she really do that well last night?

Maybe she did:

“She’s going to be a force to be contended with, no doubt about it,” said Vin Weber, a former Minnesota congressman and top Pawlenty adviser, who has known Ms. Bachmann since she entered politics just over a decade ago…

In a brief chat at an airport Tuesday after her return from New Hampshire, Ms. Bachmann said she was “very pleased” by her debate performance. When it was noted that her name was the most-searched term on Google in the hours after the debate, she said that was “as good a measure as any” of how well she had done…

Some GOP strategists argue that a Bachmann run makes it less likely that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will enter the race. The two share similar styles and an overlapping base.

But Rick Halvorsen, chairman of Iowa’s Warren County Republican Party, believes there is plenty of room for both. He said he could support Ms. Bachmann, but he wants to see Ms. Palin jump in. “I’d be more interested in someone from outside of Washington,” he said.

Twenty-four hours later, she’s still number 13 on Google Trends. (Huntsman, thanks to news of his impending announcement, is in 10th place.) In fact, MSNBC’s been trumpeting Bachmann all day long, from “Morning Joe” to Matthews to hard-left liberal Cenk Uygur to Martin Bashir, who asked S.E. Cupp whether Bachmann was the thinking man’s Sarah Palin. I can’t decide if they’re simply and uncharacteristically recognizing the fact that a tea-party hero really did do well last night, or if there’s some sort of agenda to their sudden Bachmania. The perennial read from conservative talk radio when lefty media starts chatting up a Republican is that it’s reverse psychology, aimed at promoting a RINO who’ll be easy pickings for Obama. Well, stick with this clip and you’ll find HuffPo’s correspondent going so far as to suggest that Bachmann could catch fire in Iowa and then surprise Romney in New Hampshire, which would all but assure her the nomination. Is this psychology or reverse psychology? I can’t follow the nuance anymore.

Also, what does Michael Steele mean at the end when he calls Bachmann the “working woman’s Palin”? Huh?