McCain and His Lobbyist Lover: The Final Straw for the GOP Base? [VIDEO]

In the Washington Post followup to the NYT piece on John McCain's murky relationship with lobbyist, a name is now attached to one of the previously unnamed aides who confronted Vicki Iseman and told her to stay away from the senator.

John Weaver, who was McCain's closest confidant until leaving his current campaign last year, said he met with Vicki Iseman at the Center Cafe at Union Station and urged her to stay away from McCain. Association with a lobbyist would undermine his image as an opponent of special interests, aides had concluded.

...McCain, after his unsuccessful 2000 campaign, has emerged as the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. His reputation as a crusader for Washington reform -- forged during almost 30 years in the Senate -- is based largely on his stinging critiques of the role played by lobbyists. He routinely decries earmarks, or pet projects, inserted into legislation. He has repeatedly maintained that he has "never, ever done a favor for any lobbyist or special interest group." It was this reputation that McCain's closest aides sought to protect.

"We were running a campaign about reforming Washington, and her showing up at events and saying she had close ties to McCain was harmful," one aide said.

The moralist wing of the party is outraged, particularly Bay Buchanan, who was with the currently suspended Romney campaign. She was frothing at mouth last night on CNN's AC360, stoking the fundie fires. She obviously thinks her man Mitt would have walked away with the nomination had this story dropped back before Florida.

COOPER: Bay Buchanan, I have got to ask you. As you were working for the Romney campaign, would this have made a difference when you were with the campaign? I mean, how would this have changed things had that story broken months ago?

BUCHANAN: Oh. Oh, there's no question it would have impacted. No question it would have impacted our primaries.

We -- we -- you know, conservatives are -- we believe that we are the family value party. We believe it seriously. We expect our candidates to live up to those values, not just to talk about them and expect us to vote for them, and not be there really when it counts.

And our -- we have a basic belief. If can you lie to your wife and your children, then the voter doesn't have a prayer. And, so, that's where we stand. We assume our candidates are that way, unless we -- we have reason to believe otherwise.

Considering this is the party of Mark Foley, Larry Craig, David Vitter and a host of Republican Sexual Hypocrites, the above is a howler. David Gergen was on as well, and he later called out Bay on God's Own Party's hypocrisy. That's after the jump.