This is definitely inside baseball. But sort of like a person with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, John McCain had his reform/Dem-leaning advisors and others who were more conventionally Republican. John Weaver through most of the last decade was McCain's inner-Reformer, inner-Dem. I think at some point in the early part of this decade he switched his own party registration to Democrat. In any case, he was dropped in the big house-cleaning McCain did late last year. He's bitten his lip until now. But apparently, with McCain's Britney-Paris-Obama ad, he's finally had enough.