The $64,000 dollar question is will the American electorate vote the GOP into power in the House or Senate in the upcoming elections?

Sessions and Cornyn are attempting to inspire the holier-than-thou crowd with nostalgic imagery of times better for the Christian capitalist agenda.

I wonder, WWJ would say about Christian capitalists? -Kevo

They can make Americans nostalgic and hero worshipy for a disaster like Ronald Reagan, I'm sure they can do the same for GW Bush.

Two-thousand-what to two-thousand-who now?

Risky my butt. What is risky about the Republicans saying these things? Many in the electorate neither know nor care about the timeline and where Bush ended and Obama began. People look at the top, look at the bottom line, then assign credit or blame. And our compliant corporate media plays along. I will be disheartened and angry if the Republicans are able to restore themselves to power in the House and, potentially, the Senate. At the same time, I will not be the slightest bit surprised.

OK, I'm on board for re-renaming everything that got renamed after Reagan after Bush instead. We might as well complete the farce.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said in April that Bush "will go down as a very, very good president,"

If you add "for the richest 1% of Americans" every time a Republican says something nonsensical like that, the meaning changes from laughably false to unfortunately true. All Republican policy has worked out very well over the last 40 years if you're rich enough.

Every time one of these clowns try to peddle this nonsense the followup question should be: which states will Bush be campaigning in this fall?

HAS THE GOP COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN 2001 TO 2009?

Maybe, maybe not, but they certainly hope American voters have.

Dems have been trying to push this argument for months, and for some reason, the GOP now appears intent to help. It seems more than a little risky.

Not really. Americans already believe that Obama was responsible for the TARP bailout. Most are too busy scrambling to stay financially afloat to pay attention to the news. They don't know enough to recognize that Republicans are lying when they claim that most job losses have occurred since Obama took office. And they're more than willing to believe that the banks failed because of the "liberal agenda" that forced banks to make bad loans to those lazy dark-skinned people.

What Democrats have to do is recognize that most of the "journalists" in the corporate-controlled media are nothing but stenographers for the Republicans and merely report without question whatever lying talking point the Republicans spew forth. And Democrats have to push back, asking reporters why they report something when they know it's not true.

The Bush legacy restoration project?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Look,
You can put new siding on it, a new roof, even a glass in the half-moon window, but it'll always stay an outhouse that covers a shit-hole.

Cornyn has a point; I'm much fonder of Bush... now that he's not in a position to mess anything up.

It's a cargo cult.

If they build the runway, and the control tower, and paint the stripes, the planes with all the neat stuff will come back.

They might as well name John Frum RNC Chairman.

As a lawyer who handles personal bankruptcies I can tell you that the years 2001-2009 were the years millions of Americans tried to keep up by converting their home equity to cash. All the while jobs by the millions were shipped to China and India. Once the jobs and home equity was gone, or the rates reset, the economy collapsed in 2007-2008. At the same time the upper 1% waxed rich on the backs of the middle class who, on a percentage basis, were actually paying more in combined taxes.

Yep the Bush years were great for most Americans. Sort of like an Indian summer before a deep and dark winter.

From Steve T's comment:

"And Democrats have to push back, asking reporters why they report something when they know it's not true."

Here's the reason why: corporate controlled media pundits KNOW VERY WELL that the moment they start questioning their bosses (i.e. Jeff Bewkes, Bob Iger, Sumner Redstone, Rupert "Herr Goebbels" Murdoch, and Jeff Immelt), they know they will GET FIRED RIGHT ON THE SPOT!

'Nuff said.

If Democrats treat voters as adults, and spend the campaign making their case (instead of apologizing and moving to the center), they could do much better than expected this fall.

The Republicans are on record as opposing aid to the unemployed while supporting tax cuts for the wealthy. They are prisoners to a base that wants to end Social Security. They sided with Wall Street against financial reform. They voted unanimously against health insurance for preexisting conditions. They opposed every effort to simulate the economy. They have abused the filibuster and other Senate rules to block what Americans want.

You rarely get opponents this easy to run against. This is why most Democratic voters are complacent at this point. The assume (correctly) a moderately competent campaign should be successful. The assumption that the Democrats will run a campaign that is at least moderately competent is what is doubtful.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

The modern GOP operates in a postmodern media environment where facts are far less important than the power of the messaging/propaganda effort at which they excel. They benefit from decades of work dismantling the public education system, and co-opting the news media. Facts? They don't need no stinkin' facts!

Sessions: “People had jobs when Republicans were not only in charge but George Bush was there”

Reality bites:

JOB LOSSES 2001 FORWARD

The GOP 2010 campaign slogan:Returns us to power, we weren't done wrecking the place.

The Bush agenda was and is the GOP agenda. They have no other ideas, so they have to revive Bush. They revived the disastrous policies of the '20s because everyone had forgotten. Now the latest disaster caused by that policy mix is fresh in people's mind, so they need to spin and distort and confuse.

'Refudiating' Bush was a short-lived posture because people wanted change; now they see the opportunity to re-sell Bush as the change. Now we wait to see whether Americans are stupid enough to take the bait. I wish I were confident that they are not.

You can tell just how serious the Republicans are by how many Texans they have in charge of things. Both Sessions (NRCC) and Cornyn (NRSC) are from Texas. Dick Armey, the single worst s.o.b. lobbyist/provocateur in the party is from Texas. George W. Bush, arguably the worst president since his biological ancestor Franklin Pierce, is from Texas.

As a native-born Texan, I have long believed that the best single thing to be done for the United States is to reduce the union from 50 to 49. Kick Texas out and all these guys are someone else's problem. It would even be legal to sicc the CIA on them as the furriners they are.

It's a pretty big country.

Is it possible we can find a President who is as good at not-being-George-W.-Bush as the current officeholder, who at the same time isn't quite so communist-ey?

Seems like so little to ask...

Let me get this straight.

The Republicans ran the car into the ditch.
But they still want to steer.
NO! 2008 election. Democrats are steering now.

So as we try to drive forward, the GOP keeps their foot on the brake! (Senate filibusters.)
We make halting progress, an inch at a time.

And NOW their grasping hands are reaching for the gear-shift lever, to put the car into reverse?

No way, no how! Let's take their keys and make 'em walk home!

Ed

I'm genuinely confused by this.

My impression was that by 2008--hell, by 2005--most of the GOP establishment loathed Bush nearly as much as we did (although for very, very different reasons). And by Bush I mean the remaining nucleus of the particular neocon/oilpatch faction-ette that had used him to get into the White House in the first place.

So I can understand why we had Mitch McConnell or Trent Lott or Haley Barbour holding their noses as they went to the mattresses for him and his policies while he was president--but a Bush Restoration Project?!

The smartest thing the GOP has done in the last decade was to let McCain's loss be a referendum on Bush. I can't believe anyone in the GOP wants to have to go back to polishing that turd--why would they choose to when it won't even help?

The Bush team did one thing very well. It changed the tax code to really, really benefit the rich. People don't realize it, but when you take a good hard look at the Bush tax cuts you realize that the Bush team was actually able to lower taxe rates for the rich below middle class tax rates. Those Bush rates sunset on January 1. Republicans are pandering to their real base, the upper 1% when they talk about restoring Bush's image and extending his greatest achievement, the transfer of the better part of a trillion dollars from the Middle Class and their children to the upper 1%.

i know the gop likes to claim that they don't govern by poll...but bush remains incredibly unpopular pretty much everywhere...

last week's time poll:

– 71 percent blame the Bush for the “balky economy,” while 27 percent blame Obama.

– 53 percent favor Obama over Bush (33 percent).

About this time in 1982, Democrats were sure that the country was on the verge of a great wave of nostalgia for Jimmy Carter, and would be ready to sweep Mondale into office in a landslide two years later. Oh yes, please, Republicans, keep reminding us of the good old days of Bush.