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"    John Weaver is a leading Republican strategist, having worked on a number of presidential campaigns and successful senate and gubernatorial efforts. He served as John McCain&amp;#039;s chief strategist for almost 11 years, and in this cycle worked for Jon Huntsman. We&amp;#039;re honored to have John joining us on The Politics Blog. You can follow him here in conversation pretty much every day, and on Twitter at @JWGOP. In the meantime, let&amp;#039;s pick up where we left off on Friday.... \u2014M.W. MARK WARREN: So the good news for your side is that this week can&amp;#039;t possibly be as bad as last week. But as bad as it was, you gamely asserted that Mitt can still win if he comes out with a comprehensive plan, campaigns to all Americans, especially the 47 percent, etc. To me, this is akin to saying that if only Joe the Plumber were Einstein he wouldn&amp;#039;t be a moron. Understand my problem? The Republican position now relies solely on magical thinking. To taking the opposite of real and calling it real. Why, your chairman Rinse Pubus even said that last week was a very good week. Okay.  And speaking of your party, a quick housekeeping matter: Last week, John, you made a reference to the &amp;quot;Democrat Party.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;re not one of those guys, are you John? Of course, you&amp;#039;re not. You mean to tell me that you people are against adjectives, too? Don&amp;#039;t make me start calling your party the Republic Party, and referring to you as a &amp;quot;Republic strategist.&amp;quot; Sheez. Okay, to your last points on Friday, when you went all medieval on the Republic talking points about Obama. First, you lambasted the president for not aggressively going after &amp;quot;job creation,&amp;quot; instead adding a &amp;quot;giant health care burden&amp;quot; on businesses. Sequence of priorities is a fair angle of attack. And we&amp;#039;ll leave aside until later your characterization of expanding the health-care pool as a &amp;quot;burden.&amp;quot; Because John, perhaps you are aware that those two things \u2014 jobs and economy-sucking health-care costs \u2014 don&amp;#039;t exist in separate universes and are in fact inextricably intertwined? And moreover, perhaps you have in your alternate reality an alternate congress and an alternate Republic Party which would have sought to govern with the president during the initial acute crisis? To do anything, at all, to ameliorate the disaster? Perhaps you are aware that here in this reality, the Senate Minority Leader, Yertle T. Turtle of Kentucky, stated a couple years ago that his number-one priority wasn&amp;#039;t improving the of country or the lot of its people. It wasn&amp;#039;t cutting taxes or balancing the budget. It wasn&amp;#039;t even your party&amp;#039;s favorite hobby \u2014 sneaking into bedrooms to make sure people are having government-approved sex. No, the Republic leader of the Senate&amp;#039;s number-one priority was to make Obama a one\u2013term president, thus returning the White House to its rightful owners, Donald and Melania Trump. So I ask you to search your soul and answer me true: Who has been the bigger impediment to fixing the economy, Obama or you people?  Ditto your next talking point, immigration. Do I really need to do this? You are aware your party in Arizona recently criminalized a third of the population, right? And your party in Alabama changed that state&amp;#039;s motto to State of Unpicked Lettuce, by announcing that those job-stealing migrant workers weren&amp;#039;t welcome there anymore, on account of their brownness. And even that great and good man that we both admire, Senator McCain, was forced to pretend that the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform legislation was a clerical error. So I ask you, John: In what reality was Obama supposed to have passed immigration reform?  And excuse me, Obama is responsible for the tone in Washington? Yeah, it&amp;#039;s awful how he made up all that stuff about how John Boehner is a secret Muslim from Kenya and how Eric Cantor is a Trojan horse for jihad come to implement Sharia Law, and how he stood up ate that joint session and yelled &amp;quot;You lie&amp;quot; to that peckerwood from South Carolina. And it&amp;#039;s awful how nobody in the president&amp;#039;s party stood up to say that enough was enough. And then there&amp;#039;s that stuff Obama spread about how Mitt Romney isn&amp;#039;t even eligible to be president because he&amp;#039;s 52-percent machine. (Wait, that last one is true. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! John, you can&amp;#039;t be serious. Your party has become a hive of lies and conspiracies, and Obama&amp;#039;s responsible for that?! I am filibustering here, so as for foreign policy, I will give the short answer: At least Obama didn&amp;#039;t spend a trillion dollars invading the wrong country. (And by the way, you are aware that Romney has become Bibi Netanyahu&amp;#039;s chihuahua, right? Very little spine, itsy-bitsy teeth, but a ferocious little bark! I ask you, John: What would TR say?) Oh, and Happy Monday!  JOHN WEAVER: It seems just a few questions about the president got your heart racing. Calm down. Try some decaf. Breathe. Given the state of the Romney campaign, it will probably be all right. Mark, I thought we might have a serious exchange, but these fair questions morphed you into Rachel Maddow. Before we revisit those questions and discuss Romney&amp;#039;s unproductive weekend, let me be clear about a few things: I have tremendous respect for the Democratic Party, its rich history, and the leaders for America they&amp;#039;ve produced. I find it reprehensible that any party leader would say their number-one goal is the defeat of the President, putting politics so far ahead of championing the public good. I&amp;#039;m talking about Mitch McConnell, but could easily be talking about Harry Reid&amp;#039;s conduct as well. Both parties need new, more responsive and responsible leadership in the Senate. You interject Donald Trump. Yes, this year he is a Republican. In past cycles he&amp;#039;s been a Democrat or an Independent. But always an opportunist. And a clown. I also think the president is a good and decent man, who loves his country as much as anyone, and wants to see the country prosper at home and abroad. Those who suggest he is either from Kenya or some other place in the world other than America, who see him as a Muslim, are ignorant and leaders in our party and the media have done us no good as a nation for not knocking this back. However, Mark, he is not a deity, so can we move on? So, you decided to not answer any of my questions? Or rather, answer them with a series of rants and your own questions. The president chose to fight for and pass health-care reform in lieu of using the political leverage from his historic campaign on a laser-like focus on the economy. His choice. Unlike a lot of Republicans, there is much I like in his health-care plan: the ability to have coverage with pre-existing illness, coverage for young people on their parents&amp;#039; plan up to age 26, and more. It befuddles me, and it seems to befuddle Governor Romney, that Mitt has taken the approach he has to health care, given his own plan was a model for Obama&amp;#039;s. But I digress. In my opinion, focusing on the economy was both the right and correct political thing to do. The Republicans haven&amp;#039;t made a successful case on this, but just imagine how much more juice the president would have now if unemployment was down even just one more percentage point? And please don&amp;#039;t get me started on immigration. President Obama, as Senator, initially signed on to McCain-Kennedy, and then cynically proposed an amendment that would kill the bill, just to keep the Democratic base happy. And as president he has yet to even propose a comprehensive immigration plan. Blame the Republicans all you want, but there&amp;#039;s been no bill for them to oppose. And before you respond, the Republicans have been just atrocious on the issue. The biggest mistake of this election cycle has been Romney&amp;#039;s far right lunge on immigration in the GOP primary. But just because my party, unfortunately, has been both irresponsible and suicidal on the issue, doesn&amp;#039;t cover up the president&amp;#039;s lack of leadership. And no, he didn&amp;#039;t invade the wrong country. But he also hasn&amp;#039;t extracted us from Afghanistan yet. The American people have already decided this, but because the leadership in both parties don&amp;#039;t want the &amp;quot;We Lost Afghanistan&amp;quot; sign hung around their necks, young American and allied lives are lost. Is that what the liberal base of the Democratic party expected? I think not.  The president is aloof and icy. He has few friends in the Congress, on either side of the aisle. He seems to have few personal relationships with foreign leaders. He likes to be alone or with a small cadre of close friends and aides. Fine. But the president should look to Reagan and Clinton as models on how to work with Congress and foreign leaders for the advancement of their agendas.  Now to the Romney campaign: Their bad week(s) stretched into the weekend. After curiously releasing one tax return and some details of others on Friday afternoon, they only gave rise again to an issue which they had already lost on. And, they followed that up, Friday afternoon, with a white paper on housing that was so short on details, it gives &amp;quot;short on details&amp;quot; a bad name.  60 Minutes provided a great opportunity for Governor Romney to make news, put the president on the defensive and start the week out strong. But all I can remember from 60 Minutes is that Romney wants to restore freedom. I&amp;#039;m not making that up. The president was little better, but he doesn&amp;#039;t need to be. The campaign is promising more details, more specifics to a plan to fix our ailing economy. A good thing, we&amp;#039;re nearing October. I guess they&amp;#039;re counting on some sort of debate experience that is hard to predict.  I look forward to hearing from you Mark and hope that the West Village yoga brought you some much needed calm.  Follow The Politics Blog on RSS and Twitter &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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