Interesting, isn't it, that not long after blogger Dave Weigel was gently shown the door at the Washington Post, he was back reporting on the right for its sister publication Slate? On Friday, Slate published a piece by Weigel looking at the growing solidarity between tea partiers and the GOP. Turns out attempts to launch independent “tea party” ballot challenges in November have been met with ridicule and lawsuits by tea party activists.

Take, for instance, Nevada's Scott Ashjian, “a shady and unknown businessman who got onto the ballot as the 'Tea Party' candidate” opposite Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican challenger Sharron Angle. Weigel writes that Democrats “want to believe” Ashjian “will scoop up thousands of votes and let Reid squeak by.” Cue the cold water:

Not likely. Local Tea Party activists got the jump on Ashjian, using a listserv to coordinate attacks on him, spread facts about his business and legal problems, and get as many people as possible on the record denouncing him. In short order he plunged from 18 percent to 5 percent in statewide polls. "We neutralized him pretty quickly," says Eric Odom, a Tea Party activist who relocated to Nevada, in part, to help clobber Reid. "We bought the Web address he was advertising on his Web site and pointed to StopAshjian.com—that only cost, like, $100. We traded talking points. We kind of shoved him into the spotlight, and it destroyed him, because he wasn't ready for it."

Weigel went out of his way – as is his practice and habit – to let actual tea partiers explain why they're locking arms with the GOP against a purported “tea party” candidate. One example (there are others in the piece):

"I was registered Libertarian," shrugs...Odom. "I voted for Bob Barr in 2008. So that third-party option has already been tried. Doing that doesn't outweigh the benefits of beating Democrats.”

The Slate story came a day after the magazine's media critic, Jack Shafer defended Weigel's journalism in a column. Shafer explained, “Weigel's jerkiness on a private listserv doesn't bother me much at all. If you were to purge the Post newsroom of every reporter who had been a jerk sometime in his career, you'd be facing an acre of empty desks.” Shafer said that if somebody could point him to shoddy journalism by Weigel, then maybe he could understand the firing. Until then, he'll remain firmly convinced that “Nobody should be sacked to pacify the nitpickers.”

Weigel's defenders keep coming back to his journalism because it is that good. When I was editing Labor Watch, I organized a conference that Weigel covered for the Washington Independent and The Economist. He got it bang on. Many people in many conservative organizations – from tea partiers to think tankers – had told me the same thing about his coverage before the scandal of his comments on the private journolist listserv broke.

Now Weigel is likely to transition to a more generalized politics beat, to the detriment of all conservatives who would like more reporters who try to understand and explain to readers what the right is actually thinking and doing. Score one for the zombie critics who seized this as simply another example of “ME DI AH BI ASS!” to kick the “EM ES EM!” (Which reminds me, watch this zombie interview with Tom Woods.)

But don't his semi-private opinions matter? Yes, they can. Our opinions affect what stories we cover, and how we cover them. Liberal bias is often most manifest in what doesn't get talked about. That largely wasn't the case here. Take the press's coverage of the tea parties. Weigel went out of his way early on to point out that they were worth covering, and to do so. He also went out of his way to represent tea partiers accurately while so many of his colleagues went for easy mockery.

There's also the little-discussed fact that Weigel just isn't all that liberal. Full disclosure: I've known and been good friends with him for several years now, and he's expressed an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of views during that time. He is that rare man (well, rare in DC) without an anchoring ideology, and thus chock full of contradictions. The real Dave Weigel is that annoying guy mouthing off on journolist, true. He's also the rare reporter who is more concerned with understanding what other people have to say.

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