Rightist Indignation
GOP Insider Vic Gold Launches a Broadside at the State of the Party
By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 2, 2007; Page C01
Vic Gold heard from Lynne Cheney a few weeks before George W. Bush was sworn in as president in January 2001. Cheney had an assignment for her old friend: She wanted Gold to write the profiles of her and her husband, the new vice president, for the official Inauguration program.
The veteran journalist and GOP campaign operative was a natural choice. After all, he had shared an office with Lynne Cheney at Washingtonian magazine before she became chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities -- and they even worked on a satirical novel together.
Gold was also an old friend of the new president's father, having worked with George H.W. Bush on his campaigns and co-written his autobiography. The association dated back to 1964, when Bush 41 was an unsuccessful Senate candidate in Texas and Gold a press assistant to unsuccessful presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
<snip>
"For all the Rove-built facade of his being a 'strong' chief executive, George W. Bush has been, by comparison to even hapless Jimmy Carter, the weakest, most out of touch president in modern times," Gold writes. "Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots."
Gold is even more withering in his observations of Cheney. "A vice president in control is bad enough. Worse yet is a vice president out of control."
For Gold, Cheney brings to mind the adage of Swiss writer Madame de Stael, who wrote, "Men do not change, they unmask themselves." Cheney has a deep streak of paranoia and megalomania, Gold suggests -- but he says he did not see it at first.
"He was hiding who he really was," Gold says. "He was waiting for an opportunity."
In many ways, Gold's tale of disillusionment is a familiar one. There are plenty of veterans of Reagan and Bush 41 around town who believe Bush and Cheney trashed the institutions and party they helped build from the wreckage of the Goldwater campaign.
<snip>
The war was a big factor. It seemed to Gold to run counter to the traditionally conservative notion of keeping clear of foreign entanglements. He was infuriated by Bush-Cheney moves to augment executive power. And he was disgusted by the Terri Schiavo episode, which to this old libertarian seemed emblematic of a modern GOP takeover by religious zealots.
"I really came to the conclusion that there was a threat to our system, to our way of life, and it was coming from those I thought were my people."
read the rest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/01/AR2007040101211_3.html
GOP Insider Vic Gold Launches a Broadside at the State of the Party
By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 2, 2007; Page C01
Vic Gold heard from Lynne Cheney a few weeks before George W. Bush was sworn in as president in January 2001. Cheney had an assignment for her old friend: She wanted Gold to write the profiles of her and her husband, the new vice president, for the official Inauguration program.
The veteran journalist and GOP campaign operative was a natural choice. After all, he had shared an office with Lynne Cheney at Washingtonian magazine before she became chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities -- and they even worked on a satirical novel together.
Gold was also an old friend of the new president's father, having worked with George H.W. Bush on his campaigns and co-written his autobiography. The association dated back to 1964, when Bush 41 was an unsuccessful Senate candidate in Texas and Gold a press assistant to unsuccessful presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
<snip>
"For all the Rove-built facade of his being a 'strong' chief executive, George W. Bush has been, by comparison to even hapless Jimmy Carter, the weakest, most out of touch president in modern times," Gold writes. "Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots."
Gold is even more withering in his observations of Cheney. "A vice president in control is bad enough. Worse yet is a vice president out of control."
For Gold, Cheney brings to mind the adage of Swiss writer Madame de Stael, who wrote, "Men do not change, they unmask themselves." Cheney has a deep streak of paranoia and megalomania, Gold suggests -- but he says he did not see it at first.
"He was hiding who he really was," Gold says. "He was waiting for an opportunity."
In many ways, Gold's tale of disillusionment is a familiar one. There are plenty of veterans of Reagan and Bush 41 around town who believe Bush and Cheney trashed the institutions and party they helped build from the wreckage of the Goldwater campaign.
<snip>
The war was a big factor. It seemed to Gold to run counter to the traditionally conservative notion of keeping clear of foreign entanglements. He was infuriated by Bush-Cheney moves to augment executive power. And he was disgusted by the Terri Schiavo episode, which to this old libertarian seemed emblematic of a modern GOP takeover by religious zealots.
"I really came to the conclusion that there was a threat to our system, to our way of life, and it was coming from those I thought were my people."
read the rest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/01/AR2007040101211_3.html
