Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP
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Synopses & Reviews
After four decades as a Republican insider, Victor Gold reveals how the holy-rollers and the Neo-Cons have destroyed the GOP. Now he's fighting to get his party back.
As a man who served as press aide to Barry Goldwater and speechwriter and senior advisor to George H. W. Bush (in addition to coauthoring his autobiography), Victor Gold is absolutely furious that the Neo-Cons and their strange bedfellows, the Evangelical Right, have stolen his party from him. Now he is bringing the fight to them.
Invasion of the Party Snatchers is a blistering critique not only of the Bush-Cheney administration but also of the Republican Congress. Gold is ready to tell all about the war being waged for the soul of the GOP, including the elder Bush's opinion of his son's work domestically and abroad, the significance of the newly elected Congress, and how Goldwater would have reacted to it all. Gold reveals, among other explosive disclosures, how George W. has been manipulated by his vice president and secretary of defense to become, in Lenin's famous phrase, a useful idiot for Neo-Conservative warmongers and Theo-Conservative religious fanatics.
Although there have been other books by dissident Republicans attacking the Bush-Cheney administration's betrayal of conservative principles, none have been by an insider whose political credentials include inner-circle status with Barry Goldwater and George H. W. Bush.
Review:
"Make no mistake: author Gold, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and aide to Barry Goldwater, is one disgusted Republican. The GOP of the 2006 midterm election, he writes, is 'a party of pork-barrel ear-markers like Dennis Hastert, of political hatchet men like Karl Rove, and of Bible-thumping hypocrites like Tom Delay.' Gold looks to Goldwater, 'a straight-talking, freethinking maverick,' as the yardstick by which to measure just how far the party of Lincoln has fallen. He traces the beginning of the end to the 1980 Republican National Convention and the presence of 'a militant new element...personified by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.' The other half of the equation, the neoconservatives, are embodied by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, 'two cuts from the same Machiavellian cloth.' In efficient prose, Gold scrutinizes a significant swath of recent GOP history, in particular Newt Gingrich's 104th Congress and the Bush II White House, without losing momentum. He also has choice words for 'the Coulterization of Republican rhetoric,' the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street, and 'sideshow' legislation like the Flag Protection Amendment. Gold sees a promising future for the Republican Party, but not until they lose some major elections and are able to keep down a slice of humble pie; for those disillusioned with the state of the GOP, this quick, uncompromising polemic provides substantial support, along with a large dose of cold comfort." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Book News Annotation:
Longstanding Republican Party stalwart Gold, having served as deputy
press secretary to conservative icon Barry Goldwater in the 1964
presidential campaign and as a speechwriter and senior advisor to
vice president George H. W. Bush now finds himself aghast at "a party
of pork-barrel ear-markers like Dennis Hastert, of political hatchet
men like Karl Rove, and of Bible-thumping hypocrites like Tom Delay,
all giving oleaginous cover to a profligate Congress that ran up eye-
popping deficits and an insulated White House run by a self-righteous
Texan and his arrogant inner circle of sycophants and cronies."
Rarely abandoning this sardonic tone, he traces the hijacking of the
Republican Party by the evangelical right and the neoconservatives to
the actions of the Republican leadership following Newt Gingrich's
1996 "Republican Revolution," but saves his harshest barbs for George
W. Bush, Dick Cheney and his Imperial vice presidency, and corrupt
Republican operatives in Congress and on K Street.
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Synopsis:
The last real Goldwater conservative in America attacks the current state of his movement and his party.