With many Republicans advising Mitt Romney to run against Bush, I’m left to wonder whether this just means conservatism without any compassion. What, after all, is Bushism without its deficit spending? Take away No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug benefit and Bush would have accomplished nothing more than bankruptcy reform, tax cuts, unethical government, mass killing, and economic ruin. Right?
Is that what Romney wants to offer us?
(shrug) Obama will still be black, and that fact alone guarantees 40% of the electorate will vote for the one who isn’t.
And 20% who will. That leaves 40% up for grabs. Obama needs 75% of the 40%. Or to expand the electorate.
yes
that is what Willard is offering..
where have you been, BooMan
that’s ALL he has ever offered
Yes.
I think it might turn out to be more sinister than that in the hands of competent political consultants (which Romney so far fortunately does not have).
For Romney to run against Bush would mean pointing out all of the Bush policies that Obama continued and then running against them because they are too liberal (because Obama continued them QED). Deficits and debt are a gimme in this category. Failed economic policy….
It is a Rovian attack against Obama’s strength–he definitely is not George W. Bush. And attempts to leverage the fact that the public hates Bush.
Like I said, the Romney campaign itself probably won’t do it. But watch out for this jiu-jitsu line of reasoning either in convention speeches or in SuperPAC ads.
I guess it could be seen as a kind of karma that Obama may be vulnerable to this kind of attack precisely because he himself chose “continuity” and “bipartisanship” over using his mandate to clean up the vomit after Bush’s frat party. We can argue forever about whether that was good or unavoidable, but history doesn’t care about circumstance, and will exact payment for “look forward, not back”. With a good push from the GOP con artists.
History already exacted payback in 2010. The country didn’t vote Republican because of ObamaCare, like the R’s claim. They did it for the banking mess and the trading bonuses, policies started by Bush but continued by Obama. The country would have gone for a massive banking reform, but I concede that Congress probably couldn’t turn on their paymasters. Here in Illinois we had a good Liberal candidate but he had a failed family bank and was branded along with the Wall Streeters. In Congress, the Tea Party took many seats from incumbents with anti-bank populist rhetoric. (Then of course, being Republicans, they bellied up to the Wall Street trough.)
How does that square with the narrative of Obama as Kenyan socialist? That narrative has bled over from the conservative base into independents in a way that “Bush was too liberal” never has. Thus, for people up for grabs in November, it would represent a critique of Obama that’s 180 degrees from what’s come before. Romney, of course, does those kind of pivots six times before breakfast, but I’m not so sure it’d be effective in this case.
Plenty of people, both the left and right, think Obama’s national policies are a lot like Bush’s. But they aren’t either the people or the issues that will decide this election. In the end, the bulk of those votes will be decided based on perceptions of who the candidates are. And Romney looks a lot more like Bush than Obama does.
How is it that John Kerry got swiftboated?
The people pushing Romney to distance himself from Bush likely are not the same type of Republicans as the Kenyan Socialist bunch. It’s the difference between Karl Rove and Jim Demint.
Not that Karl would distance himself from his ole buddy.
What is Bushism without war? Because you know Romney is running straight to Iran if he wins. He might not want to, but he won’t have the strength of character to deny the martial impulses of his various puppetmasters.
How dare you doubt the peaceful intentions of Secretary of State John Bolton.
ROTFLMAO!
You know what they say: don’t mess with the ‘stash.
It’s not just war, but everything. Romney has no character of his own and will glom onto the loudest screamer — and we know who that will be. Which is why his election would be the start of a major American tragedy from which we might never recover.
That’s a big problem that I haven’t heard much mention of so far. We (in a very broad use of “we”) look at Romney’s record and assume he’d be some kind of a moderate, or moreso than Bush, anyway. He’d be forced to concede this or that point to common sense or decency or whatever, I’ve read it argued.
If Romney wins that all goes out the window. He won’t be his own President, he’ll be Grover Norquist’s document-signing sock puppet. When the rabid right organizes and screams at him you can bet he’ll get right on whatever it is they demand.
It would be very popular with the conservative base.
could be a bit more sinister than you think. One the most defining elements of the Bush presidency that differs from the current GOP is that Bush was not a xenophobic nut who hates hispanic/latino people. He was generally friendly to the hispanic communities of the US, though he had no congressional support upon which to pass legislation (yes, I know that his guest worker idea was less than ideal, and basically encouraged indentured servitude, but the current GOP has set the bar even lower – to hardened eliminationism).
Given the raging xenophobia of the current GOP, “running against Bush” could just involve blaming everything on Bush’s unwillingness to demonize hispanics.