Pushing back against a possible Bush comeback

January 24, 2008

U.S. News noted a couple of weeks ago that the White House is eyeing a Bush comeback. The president’s team believes 2008 has the potential to be a “legacy year,” and the loyal Bushies “are predicting a remarkable poll shift to about 45 percent favorable by the time he leaves office next year.”

If recent economic and Iraq news are any indication, that seems highly unlikely, but in either case, before Republicans get their hopes up, it’s worth keeping in mind that Bush’s “comeback” will be facing some “pushback.”

A liberal advocacy group plans to spend $8.5 million in a drive to make sure President Bush’s public approval doesn’t improve as his days in the White House come to an end.

Americans United for Change plans to undertake a yearlong campaign, spending the bulk of the money on advertising, to keep public attention on what the group says are the failures of the Bush administration, including the war in Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and the current mortgage crisis.

In selling the plan to fundraisers, the group has argued that support for President Reagan was at a low of 42 percent in 1987 but climbed to 63 percent before he left office. “All of a sudden he became a rallying cry for conservatives and their ideology,” said Brad Woodhouse, president of the group. “Progressives are still living with that.”

Now, I know what some of you are thinking, because at first, I was thinking it, too: this seems like an unnecessary investment of $8.5 million. Bush is already extraordinarily unpopular, is widely seen as abject failure, and has no realistic chance of seeing a political recovery this year. A coordinated campaign to keep his approval ratings down is overkill.

But there’s a flip-side.

The weaker Bush’s standing in the fall, the harder it will be for his party to have a good cycle.

Woodhouse said one goal is to make sure Bush does not enjoy a resurgence in public approval toward the end of his presidency that could help Republican congressional candidates and the Republican presidential nominee in this year’s elections.

“Framing his legacy helps us in the ’08 elections, there is no doubt about that,” Woodhouse said. “But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents.”

Bush’s approval ratings are at 34 percent, according to a poll this month by The Associated Press and Ipsos. Republican presidential candidates are hardly embracing Bush, except to support his policy in Iraq, and many are echoing calls from Democrats for change in Washington.

Looking to test Bush support within the GOP, Americans United is distributing “I am a Bush Republican” buttons to Republican members of Congress before the State of the Union address. Woodhouse also plans to unveil a bus that will travel the country carrying an exhibit that portrays Bush’s tenure in office — mementos from Iraq and flood ravaged New Orleans as well as symbols of the economic downturn.

And, one assumes, if John McCain gets the Republican nomination, this initiative, coupled with a ubiquitous picture of McCain hugging Bush, should help tilt the scales a little.

The first ad from Americans United for Change is scheduled to air in advance of Bush’s State of the Union speech on Monday. Stay tuned.

AUC should do a Huckabee and hold a press conference to announce and show all the things they plan to do and then say they’re going to spend the money on poor people instead.

  • If we go into recession this year, it’ll be the final nail in the GOP’s coffin. No incumbent party has ever held the White House if there was a recession during the lead up to the presidential election.

    I think a better use of the money would be to attack the Republican brand. Point out what a mess the party as a whole has made of everything, and plant the idea that they are incapable of governing. (This would be a relatively easy sell, since it happpens to be true.) Attacking Bush means wasting resources knocking down a guy who won’t even be in the game this time next year.

  • To the extent that any left-leaning group can advance the meme that *all* Republicans are “Bush Republicans”–and, based on their views about war (“it’s fan-tastic!”), economic stimulus (“Know what’d really help? Tax cuts for the Hiltons!”), torture (“as American as tax cuts for billionaires!”) and executive power (“makes the trains run on time!”), they are–this isn’t just helpful but probably necessary for Democrats’ November chances.

  • They should pin those “I am a Bush Republican” pins on every Democrat in
    Congress except for Feingold and Dodd. Preferably through their skin.

  • “I’m a Bush Republican.”

    🙂

    I don’t expect that to replace the Holy Flag in very many lapels of Republican pols.

    Funny as “I’m a Bush Republican.” sounds, I am seeing very few presidential bumper stickers for Republican presidential candidates. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve seen even one. But I still see a lot of “W” and “Bush/Cheney” stickers from four or more years ago.

    The most common current Republican signs are hand-lettered Ron Paul signs on telephone poles.

  • The weaker Bush’s standing in the fall, the harder it will be for his party to have a good cycle.

    Let us not forget that Bush’s idea of a ‘good cycle’ is shouting ‘bombs away’ as he crests a hill.

  • Aside: Americans United for Change. Acronym AUC. To the ancient Romans in meant “Ab Urbe Condita” (“from the founding of the city”), a reference to the mythical founding date which we designate as 753 B.C. “AUC” was a fiercely conservative reference to Roman tradition. Odd acronym for a group united for change.

    Back to the point: I hope we as a nation never wax nostalgic over the Bush Crime Family and the havoc their greed has caused. At a minimum they should all be tarred and feathered on the TeeVee nightly “news-tainment” shows. And then, since Nancy Pelosi has trashed her own Constitutional responsibilities, they should all be prosecuted at the Hague for war crimes.

  • the White House is eyeing a Bush comeback. The president’s team believes 2008 has the potential to be a “legacy year,” and the loyal Bushies “are are predicting a remarkable poll shift to about 45 percent favorable

    Didn’t the WH say (and the media sop up) the exact same thing this time last year? How’d that work out for ’em?

  • And if this can then force ARi Fleishman’s group to have to spend some cash to defend Bush, so much the better.

  • They need to inform the public and I applaud the effort. The general public does not use the internet for information. They rely on newspapers and TV coverage which are too biased to tell the truth.

  • ***Americans United is distributing “I am a Bush Republican” buttons to Republican members of Congress before the State of the Union address.***

    The Bushistas will probably have phony security people posted at all the entrances to confiscate those buttons. They’re pins, for crying out loud! They have pointy things! Terrorists might fling them at Commander Deciderer Guy and poke his eye out or something! Oh, the horror!!! The inhumanity of it all!!!

    But then again, I’d rather see AUC handing out “real” implements of poking design. Bayonets. Bowie Knives. Poisoned Dart Projectiles, Whale Harpoons, and Celtic Battle Axes come to mind. Maybe with a generous smattering of farm implements, self-propelled lawn mowers, and a maniac with a back-hoe—added for good measure, of course.

    Or maybe AUC could just hand out brown paper grocery bags. An audience full of people wearing brown paper grocery bags over their heads while the chief Bushylvanian is speaking would be a lovely way to say to him: “We Care—NOT!”

    Bu$h needs to spend the next 362 days being publicly ridiculed, humiliated, insulted, and made fun of….

  • money well spent …. i’ll donate.

    every single voter has to be reminded what a fraudulent moron this guy is; and most importantly, any coordinated effort to ensure that this (a brainless pretender steals the oval office) NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

    i agree .. put the campaign out there. make every voter remember eight years of GOP incompetence, and let the republican candidate make crystal clear their position vis a vis every single thing bush has done and said ….

    remember: most voters educate themselves by watching bill o’reilly and wheel of fortune, so every little bit of counter-programming helps.

  • The “legacy” year will begin when a new president starts correcting all the blunders made by this president.

  • …loyal Bushies “are predicting a remarkable poll shift to about 45 percent favorable by the time he leaves office next year.”

    For myself, I predict my opinion of Bush will be much better exactly one year from today, after he has done the one worthwhile thing of his presidency: leave office.

    The legacy push begins Monday with the State of the Union address, when Bush will make a fool of himself by failing to acknowledge his own misgovernance and by blaming Congress for his mistakes.

    Aren’t there better ways to spend money than on ad campaigns to remind Americans what a doofus Bush is?

  • I can’t tell you how many times I thought something was so blatantly stupid, all we had to do was step back and give them the rope to hang themselves, but we were usually the ones left swinging.

  • “But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents.”

    Thank the gods SOMEONE is doing this. You’d think the liberal part of the Dem coalition would be front-and-center to talk up the failure of the conservative ideology as a governing philosophy. Sadly, that would involve whacking some of their own collegues, and we can’t have that.

    And I’m glad someone remembered that Reagan was at less than 50% before the November election cycle in ’88. I don’t know if that could happen with Bush – part of the reason why Reagan improved by the time he left office was because of the constant barrage of “look how great the last 8 years have been” ads Bush the Elder flooded the airwaves with during the election season and I doubt anyone will be doing that for Bush the Lesser – but I would hate to see Bush’s tenure remembered as some “high point” for America a decade or so down the road.

  • “But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents.”

    It’s about time! If we should have learned anything over the past 20 years it’s that this conservative insanity is larger than one Reagan or Gingrich or Kristol or Bush. I just hope they let the facts and the soundbites speak for themselves — they’re most powerful in their stark, unembellished glory.

  • The two best days of the Bush administration:

    * The day he was inaugerated
    * The day he leaves

  • The rotting carcass of Bush’s policies should be hung around the neck of every Republican to remind them what they helped bring about. The rotting carcass should be exhibited for all the voters to see to serve as a reminder that an “R” as a party designation is a badge of shame.
    I’ll contribute to AUC.

  • The rotting carcass of Bush’s policies should be hung around the neck of every Republican to remind them what they helped bring about. This rotting carcass should be exhibited for all the voters to see to serve as a reminder that an “R” as a party designation is a badge of shame.
    I’ll contribute to AUC.

  • When your opponent is down, throw them an anvil.

    More importantly than keeping Bush down, I think it’s important to make sure that he is firmly lashed around the neck of every Republican running in a district that might go Dem. This election needs to be a good-bye kick in the ass to the guy who screwed us all. It needs to be portrayed as a referendum on the Party Of Bush.

    I recommend finding pictures of Republican candidates, posing them with GWB, and posting them far and wide. Put a huge banner at the bottom: “[Republican Candidate X] is Bush’s friend, not yours.” For fun, use this picture:

    http://www.popular-pics.com/Bush_giving_the_finger_Pictures.aspx

    Bush is our best ally right now, for the long haul campaign wherein we remove the Liebermans, the Pelosis, and the Reids from our side. We need a huge wave of D’s, and then we need some leadership.

  • Unlike Bill Clinton, President Bush isn’t seeking a third term in office. I love that some dorks in a “‘liberal’ advocacy group” are spending millions being stupid. It means millions less for the loser candidates they support.

    Keep it going, libs. All we conservatives have to do is let you be yourselves, laugh hysterically at you, and just point it out to everyone else. Then let nature take its course.

  • The other thing to keep reminding people is that guys like SteveIL, who want to just forget the Bush years, the entire Conservative movement diefied Bush as some sort of annointed prophet and rubber stamped everything he did, every step of the way, and still do. Everything Bush did happened with a unified, enabling, blind movement backing him up.

  • Americans United for Change plans to undertake a yearlong campaign, spending the bulk of the money on advertising, to keep public attention on what the group says are the failures of the Bush administration, including the war in Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and the current mortgage crisis.
    (snip)
    “But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents.”

    This is potentially a dangerous strategy. Most Americans, even those who vote Republican, are basically decent people. If they see someone they don’t like get kicked while they’re down enough times, they will eventually start to feel sympathy for the person being kicked.

    What Americans for Change should be doing is attacking Bush’s ideas and policies, not Bush or any other individual Republican. This ties into a discussion here a couple days ago about reaching out to Republicans. Democrats shouldn’t be reaching out to Republicans. The hard-core 30 percent who still approve of the job Bush is doing, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, are never going to vote for a Democrat. It’s the people in the middle who vote for Republicans, but who don’t identify themselves as Republicans, who need to be given a reason to vote for a Democrat.

    What liberals and progressives need to do to promote a working Democratic majority is to drive a stake through the heart of the ideas that Democrats find difficult to argue against, like:

    Tax Cuts – Cutting taxes does not increase revenue. It never has and it never will. If you cut taxes you have to cut spending or you will increase the deficit.

    Supply Side Economics — Americans who work in the real world understand Demand Side Economics, where an entrepreneur sees a need and invents a product or starts a business to meet that need. Supply side economics turns reality on it’s head. Government policies give the wealthy and corporations extra money, and they create some unnecessary product and then use advertising to create demand for it.

    ”Strict Constructionist” Judges — “Activist” judges have ended segregated schools (Brown v. Board of Education), ended anti-misogyny laws (Loving v. Virginia), and overturned laws prohibiting birth control (Griswold v. Connecticut). By contrast, “strict constructionist” judges supported property rights and legal precedent over human rights when they ordered a slave who escaped to the North returned to his master (Dred Scott v. Sandford).

    anti-”Moral Relativism” — We absolutely should practice moral relativism in our foreign policy. The United States should always behave better than any other country. American allies, especially the ones we provide with weapons, should always behave better than America’s enemies.

    Deregulating corporations — Milton Friedman was correct when he said that the purpose of a corporation is to increase its profits. But the obvious corollary to this is that if you expect corporations to do anything else, like produce a product that doesn’t kill people in a workplace that doesn’t kill or maim its workers and using methods that don’t poison the air and water of the people who live nearby, then you have to require them to do so. Corporations aren’t evil, nor or they good. Corporations are artificial entities, so they don’t have consciences or morals. If it lowers their profits, corporations won’t do what’s right unless they are forced to.

    Reach out to people who have voted for Republicans by showing them how they have been duped by Bush and the Republicans (and Democrats) who voted with him, and their enablers, the corporate-controlled media.

  • I’ve been watching and listening to several media outlets this PM regarding the “Money Landfall” some of the well to do will be receiving from our holly benefactors and protectors, Tha Politicians. Wow! the convened sum will surely give the “Haves” more to show. Those of us who earn around 34 grand will see nothing, even though we spend and pay the same high prices everyone else does. We can’t even save much because banks don’t pay any interest on the money we have deposited. Capitalism can’t work without a substantial group of citizens pinned against a wall. This is a sad fact and the reason why it is so difficult for those of us who work their asses and see no life improvement and no hope. Politicians are nothing but pawns of the rich and powerful they pander to their kings in order to secure more greenbacks. We need another revolution to kick these bastards asses across the Atlantic,and back to England.

  • What amazes me is this, for example:

    In GA we have a weak-sister Republican Senator running for re-election. He’s kissed George and Dickie’s ASSES until his lips are raw, and the DAMN FOOL
    DEMOCRATS won’t call him out on it. They won’t even field a candidate for the office whose name is recognizable to the general public. HELL, the convict who stole a guard’s gun and shot a Judge and three other folks IN THE COURT ROOM is better known that the would-be Democratic Candidate.

    AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING. . . . .

  • SteveIL

    “It means millions less for the loser candidates they support.”

    is that what they

    are teaching these days in troll school

    heh…

    soon the republican party will

    be small enough to flush down the toilet

    where it belongs

    heh…

  • It is not enough to attack Bush – it is the FAILED conservative ideas that have dominated the U.S. for the past 30 years. Bush is but the culmination of those ideas. His presidency would not have been posible with the domination of the rich on political life. He is the epidomy of an upper class wastrel, and as he pointed out at white tail fund raiser his base is the “haves and the haves more.”

    I agree with everything that Steve T. has to say with one caveat. The activist judges those that ignore precedent and often statutory language to arrive to the result they want. These days they are all extreme conservatives because if they followed the law and precedent, they would not like the result. For example, Scalia is one of the most activist justices we have ever than in the history of the Supreme Court. The idea that activist judges are liberal is the same as the myth of the “liberal media”

  • Americans United is distributing “I am a Bush Republican” buttons to Republican members of Congress before the State of the Union address.

    The Bushistas will probably have phony security people posted at all the entrances to confiscate those buttons.
    Maybe the point is to hand them out and then call attention to how few actually wear them.

    I was in Texas during the 2004 and 2006 elections. In ’04 every Republican candidate’s advertising was simply “I’m a Bush Republican” — no need to even mention stances on actual issues. But by ’06 *none* were mentioning Bush in their ads. I seriously doubt that his odor has improved since then.

  • For myself, I predict my opinion of Bush will be much better exactly one year from today, after he has done the one worthwhile thing of his presidency: leave office.

    I predict that as soon as he leaves office the right wing will start worshiping him as a saint second only to St. Reagan, with a rewritten history to match.

    And of course, the recession, the sorry outcome of the war, and the new taxes necessary to pay for it, will all be the Democrats’ fault.

  • You can glee gleefully at the thought of the Repugs getting repudiated due to Bush; but it is not a certainty. I would never vote for a Repug given the current crop of candidates and the last four years with Bush… But I won’t vote for another Clinton! There is the rub.

  • If Clinton and Obama would stop sniping at each other and ignore the MSM and start pushing back against the Republican lies we’d all be better off. In the last debate, McCain was saying of Democrats, “tax tax tax, spend spend spend” “If a Democrat wins there will be more of the same.” How about countering with “borrow borrow borrow, gotta buy more bombs.” or “McCain! war war war, torture torture torture, render render render, war war war forever forever forever”
    Play over and over the clip of Romney saying that everybody gets FREE HEALTH CARE if the go to the emergency room.
    Start talking about how our fallen military are shipped back to the US in cargo holds in secret instead of being shown some respect. McCain didn’t learn anything when Bush shook his hand after signing the anti torture bill then 2 seconds after McCain was gone, smugly wrote his “signing statement” making torture legal. That makes him totally UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT OF A BOYS CLUB, LET ALONE THE USA.

  • For StevelL

    I was reared in rural Mo. so your views represent nothing new to me. I know plenty of folks who ridicule liberals and their “communist” social programs even as they cash their SSI checks and pick up their food stamps on the way to the polls to vote Republican. Amazing!

    Here is a challenge for you: kindly enumerate the social movements and legislation that have benefited the most people in this country and then identify them as conservative or liberal. Be honest and keep score accurately. I think you will see my point.

  • This is an excellent strategic investment. Jeb Bush was supposed to be the smart one, and George blew it for him. Leaving any good will for the Bush name leaves us in danger of Jeb in the future.

  • Money well spent. In fact I’d contribute to that. People need to be reminded just how corrupt and (worse) and incompetent this president has been.

  • I fear his legacy will benefit because of his failures! Remember, not all actions this unmitigated disaster has taken will be felt before he leaves office. Our military will be ruined for years and the debt obligations he issued to the Chinese won’t come due until someone else is trying to clean up his mess. The environmental bill for his wet kisses to industry isn’t completely quantified. Sure, New York may be underwater, but will all that water be so toxic that it can’t be cleaned up in order to drink? It’s the hard meansures to clean up Chimpy’s Screw ups that may have folks waxing for these days, when in fact–these days are what’s going to cause the coming collapse. I wish I could be more hopeful, but there it is. One real question I’d like put to all the Candidates, including the Repugs is: What makes you think you are capable of cleaning up the mess Bush will leave behind?

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