WFB, in 2006, on Connecticut's soon-to-retire senator:
Ten years after I served as chairman of the Yale Daily News, he was elected to that position, and we found ourselves sharing an obligation to look after an old employee and his unruly son. This brought on several meetings, amiable, but without any dissimulations: He was a rising young Democratic star, I a risen conservative star. But we had a common role in effecting the fall of a Republican star, incumbent Senator Lowell Weicker.
Senator Weicker aroused such animus among alert conservative citizens of Connecticut that a few of us took solemn oaths to work against his reelection in 1988–when he was opposed by Joe Lieberman.
Members of my family were no doubt influenced by Senator Weicker’s reluctance to admit brother James Buckley, elected U.S. Senator from New York, to membership in the Republican caucus in the Senate. Weicker made the point that Senator Buckley had been elected not on the GOP ticket, but on the Conservative Party ticket. A committee was formed (BuckPac) arguing that a vote for Lieberman was a vote for ideological decontamination of the Republican Party, Lowell Weicker having, by 1988, emerged as the weepiest liberal willow in public life. Moreover, he had perfected a self-infatuated pomposity that made voting against him a carnal pleasure.
In any event, though Lieberman did not move one inch rightward, we of the Connecticut Right made common cause with him in the defeat of Weicker. And, two terms later, he was designated by candidate Al Gore as running mate in the race against George Bush, which happily Lieberman lost.
Read the rest of the column here. Senator Lieberman's splendid tribute to our founder is worth a look, too.
Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/257441/buckpacs-senator-robert-costa
No comments:
Post a Comment