Weaver The Weasel

Here is McCain strategist John Weaver trashing conservatives:

"If it's 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we're headed for a blowout," http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=d4eb658f-725c-4c95-be3a-263a73a16de7

Weaver has no business lecturing the GOP on tolerance and moderation.  The McCain campaign that he was part of ran on a nasty, silly and divisive strategy.  Calling the McCain strategy socially conservative would be unfair, since that would imply an appeal based on shared principles and policy preferences.  It was really a strategy of identity politics that tried to divide Americans based on region and residential pattern. This strategy treated rural voters like morons ("hey look, Obama called Palin a pig or something!") and didn't mind implying that urban voters were something less than fully American for not living in "the heartland".  The Weaver-guided McCain campaign responded to the financial meltdown by suggesting making a Cuomo SEC chairman and suspending the campaign in order to... well I still don't know. 

Then Palin became the scapegoat for the McCain campaign's own divisive, incompetent and issueless strategy.  Now Weaver is trying to get himself a little good publicity (and rehabilitate his own reputation among right thinking people) by postioning himself against Palin Limbaugh and Cheney. 

But nothing has really changed.  Weaver isn't appealing to any actual principles or policies.  He isn't making any arguments that Americans can relate to their lives.  He is manipulating cultural symbols in order to provoke an emotional response (Limbaugh, Palin, Cheney, eek!). The only change is that he is now hustling liberal journalists, moderate Republicans and reformist conservatives rather than the rural and exurban middle and working classes.  Guys like Weaver are worse than worthless.