Legally, GOP lobbyist Ed Gillespie structures his work as an "independent" expenditure. But Gillespie's work is NEVER "independent" of Bush "because, in some respect, he is the Bush administration. He has become one of the key figures of Washington's permanent Republican establishment--an establishment that blessed Bush's candidacy and now guides his administration far more than the White House publicly lets on. Indeed, if one of the central questions of Bush's first six months is why he has turned out to be so much more conservative than the media--and his own rhetoric--implied during the campaign, a good part of the answer is people like Ed Gillespie. In foreign affairs, Poppy's advisers may reign supreme. But on domestic policy, old hands such as Barbour and Paxon and Gillespie--and dozens of less prominent conservative insiders--shape the policies of George W. Bush just as they shaped the policies of Gingrich and Armey before him." So writes Ryan Lizza in The New Republic.