Posted on 11/15/2012 7:41:40 AM PST by Kaslin
Democrats have been blaming George W. Bush for the last four years.
Now I think it's time for Republicans to start blaming George W. for the next four years.
For a week we've been pinning last week's debacle on everything from Mitt Romney's moderation to low Republican turnout.
But the most important Republican who didn't turn out to support Romney this fall was George W. Bush.
You can make an honest argument that G.W. was as much to blame as anyone else for our being unable to defeat an incompetent incumbent of historic proportions.
For four years Barack Obama has blamed the Great Recession on G.W. and used his presidency as his excuse for why the economy is taking so long to get fixed.
And where's G.W. been? MIA or AWOL, take your pick.
He didn't show up at the GOP convention. He didn't become an enthusiastic surrogate for Romney in a handful of swing states where a few hundred thousand more Republican voters could have changed history. He didn't stump for senatorial candidates in contested states such as Virginia and Montana.
G.W., the ex-cheerleader, was nowhere to be seen or heard during Romney's campaign. What's worse, he didn't even defend his own economic record. He let the conservatives on talk radio and at Fox News do it.
The trouble is talk radio and Fox only reach about 20 million people during a week - and most of them are already in the conservative Republican choir.
Last I checked, 121 million Americans voted on Election Day. That left us Republicans with 101 million people who still needed to hear our message about who's really to blame for the broken economy of 2008 to 2012.
We griped and moaned and pointed to Obama, but the mainstream liberal media were too busy protecting their hero to fairly tell our side of the story.
The only way conservatives can get the national news media to deliver our message to the American people is to go over the media's heads. And the only people who can do that consistently are ex-presidents of the USA.
Bill Clinton became Obama's best propaganda weapon. When Clinton claimed that no one, not even a super-genius like him, could have solved the economic problem G.W. Bush left Obama within four years, every voter in America heard it.
Even Jimmy Carter was hauled out of mothballs to help the Democrat cause.
The 2012 campaign was all about "the economy, stupid." Obama blamed G.W. and Republicans. Plus, he had Clinton and Carter bashing G.W.'s record with their bully sticks every day and countering Romney's arguments that Obama was to blame.
We should have had G.W. standing up and saying, "This is bull. I'm tired of this. This is what I did or did not do with the economy as president. The real culprits are Dodd & Frank and four years of Obama's failed policies."
Instead G.W. stayed quiet, even on the issue of Benghazi. Because he refused to show up and defend himself and his record, the Republican Party had to take arrows for him and we lost our second presidential election in a row.
The question I'd like to ask my fellow conservative Republicans is, if G.W. isn't willing to stand up for his own presidency, why the heck should we?
This is one of the most ridiculous articles I have ever read.
Bush would have immensely hurt the cause. I love the guy despite some of his failings, but it would have been a disaster.
It would not matter how much he explained what he did....it would have been made WORSE, NOT BETTER by the Obama spin-meisters and media.
He was right to stay out of the spotlight.
He most likely was told to stay the hell away by GOP elitists and Romney campaign staff................
Exactly
I have to disagree with Michael Reagan on this one.
George Bush left the political stage 4 years ago. And he has earned his privacy. Any attempt he would have made to support Romney openly, such as at the convention would have been immediately attacked. He devoted 8 years of his life as President. He made some great choices..and some not so great ones. He fought to reform Social Security...and was roundly trounced by the entrenched.
The Left has devolved into a vicious horde. it wouldn’t have done Romney any good...I can almost see the ads now. And with the ‘National Enquirer’ mentaility of a huge segment of the voting public, it would have been an easy sell.
No, George Bush is spending his time wisely these days...and devotes a large portion of that to Wounded Warriors that he has never forgotten.
They didn’t invote Sarah Palin to the convention, either. The GOP needs a housecleaning.
I agree with you for a large part, DFW. At the same time, they call it a campaign, because they realize its similarity to conducting a war.
In this case, information warfare is one of the greatest weapons available. If your opponent has a 5-1 advantage over you on transmission of information, then the “candidate stupid” position must acknowledge that.
I believe G.W. was gently and politely askedNOT to attend the GOP convention.
I agree with dfwgator, Bush doesn’t owe the gop anything.
He respects the office of the President.
I voted for W twice, but we can all agree W begat Obama.
He would not defend his record and especially the war. He should be out there telling why the country needs his tavx cuts back then and we need them more now.
In fact, if he had gotten involved and Romney had lost, he would have been blamed for the loss.
Blamed if you participate, blamed if you don’t.
Either way, it’s all Bush’s fault. And now it’s Republicans saying it.
Dumb.
Romney lost for a variety of reasons. A lot of it is simply that he was running against an incumbent (always a tough proposition) who was “too black to fail.”
It’s all one big Karl Rove plot.
I'm tired of hearing the excuse that the media is the media and there is nothing we can do about it. Time to start going over there heads. Start giving press conferences; run ads during American Idol and reality shows. I don't watch them but people we need to start reaching do.
We've got to start somewhere!
What they need is an enema.
Mitt lost because too many conservatives were too contrary to vote.
LOL. You really believe that fairy tale? Mitt lost because of the GOTV issues and not responding forcefully enough to the Bain attacks. That killed him in the rust belt and there went the election.
I agree with the other posters who have noted: (a) the GOP ran away from Bush as much as GWB ran from the GOP; (b) if he had endorsed Romney it would have been spun as “four more years of Bush.”
We can all agree W begat Obama. He would not defend his record and especially the war.
This is the key point. By taking the high road W allowed the dims and MSM to control the narrative. That laid the groundwork for the kenyan.
The kenyans victory has proven once again we need to get in the gutter with them to communicate to the low information voter. Those folks just do not care to take the time to understand the big concepts. We need to break down the issues into twitter size bites for them to digest.
For this conservative, W was a toxic president who only got two things correct - Alito (accidentally) and tax cuts — and I prefer that he remain an invisible ex-president. My distaste for him is ideological and principle-based, but the the public at large their hatred is visceral as they have ought into the MSM caricature of him as an uncaring monster. His involvement would only damage conservatism and the GOP even further. Simply put he has no political capitol to invest.
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