Yes they can and probably will. The mantra: Obama tried valiantly but Bush just dug us into too deep a hole. Worked in 2012 and will work in 2016 given the IQ of the average Obamanite.
Madeleine Albright said they will blame Bush, “Forever.”
Let’s face the facts on Bush. He does deserve considerable blame for the mess we are in but not necessarily for the reasons given by the Democrats.
1) He inherited a balanced budget from Clinton and then proceeded to double the deficit accumulated since the founding of the Republic.
2) Like LBJ he tried to have both guns and butter the nation could not afford. He fought two wars overseas plus greatly expanded federal social spending (education and Medicare prescription drugs). He had no plan to fund these huge increases in spending.
3) He failed to use his veto power to reign in both the freespending Republican Congress and later a freespending Democrat Congress. If he had been serious, he’d have used the veto.
4) Other than giving a couple of speeches no one heard about Fannie and Freddie, he did nothing to reign them in. Why didn’t he use the bully pulpit, criss crossing the country the way Obama does on taxing the rich, if he truly thought it was a problem? Why didn’t he ask Congress to defund Fannie and Freddie or privatize them? The truth is the Bush Treasury department was run by Wall Street insiders and let Wall Street run wild.
5) Despite his role as leader of the nation, he went AWOL during the financial crisis of 2008 allowing former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner to save the big Wall Street banks on the back of the taxpayer. He was responsible for TARP.
6) He may have been the recipient of vicious and unfair attacks from the Left but he never fought back. When conservative ideals were under attack he played the role of punching bag, turning the other cheek instead of engaging a real debate about the future of the country. His credibility as a leader was lost because of his own inaction. I must conclude the self described “compassionate conservative” president was really a liberal statist because he never used the power of the office to promote conservative principles and ideals, much less push back against the growth of the socialist state.
Bush enabled the rise of Obama. He lost the respect of the American people, and his party, because he failed to articulate and fight for an alternative to the welfare state. He failed to use his veto power to preserve the balanced budget he inherited. He failed to lead the country against the onslaught of the social left and its media allies. Bush will be blamed for decades by the left because his poor leadership allowed them to define him. Had he been a strong leader like Reagan, going around the media to the people with a powerful message, his legacy would be much different.
George W. Bush failed as a leader. We conservatives need to stop apologizing for him and own up to the facts, just as the Democrats repudiated Lyndon Johnson for his failures and sent Jimmy Carter into exile for years for his failures. Until we repudiate the Bush openly as a traitor to conservatism, the Democrats will continue to wrap that boat anchor around our necks.