Another conservative jumps ship

By now, it's clear Bush's GOP base is shrinking faster than an ice cube in a pot of boiling water. Turning up the stove temperature is Victor Gold, a former speechwriter and GOP insider. He once wrote a book called Libberwocky: What Liberals Say and What They Really Mean. He has co-written books with Daddy Bush and Lynne Cheney. I bet he even managed to keep food down while working with the latter. He's the kind of person the wingnutosphere would be proud to include among their own...if he didn't just write a book that dissed Dear Leader.

Anyway, the book in question is called Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy Rollers and the Neocons Destroyed the GOP. Folks, this is what a really disillusioned Republican looks like.

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. Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots.

OUCH!

Like Brent Scowcroft, another friend of Daddy, Gold is a traditional conservative. Which means he believes in foreign restraint. Which also means that he really, really hates what Bush and Cheney have done and thinks it's a betrayal of all the GOP once stood for. And like so many right wingers, he says he was hoodwinked by Cheney.

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."

At the risk of sounding really uncharitable, I have a suggestion for Mr. Gold. Maybe he could retract that silly Libberwocky book of his. After all, it's just another example of right-wing projection. You know, the sort of nonsense that's contributed to the poisoning of public discourse. If he's really come around to reality, surely he'd want to distance himself from it.