Referendum?

This ebook is described as proposing that the upcoming election is really a referendum on George W Bush. It's an interesting formulation, which I hadn't thought of exactly like that; although it's clear enough, and I've said so many times, that R and R want to take us back, in all ways, to those times. In his deafening absence from R/R/R talking points (and conventions), it's pretty clear they'd rather we not put it that way.

This book documents how the eight year reign of President George W. Bush changed Washington and the country. A compilation of some of the best journalism published in the Washington Monthly magazine during those years, the book provides an insightful real-time account of what happened in the nation’s capital when, for the first time in half a century, the GOP took charge of both elected branches of government. Suddenly, the rules in Washington changed in ways Beltway veterans were slow to see, in the service of an agenda they did not grasp, and with a level of incompetence that they literally could not believe...

I might have to give it a read. In any case, although Ds are pointing it out to a certain extent, it seems to me it needs to be made very clear, because it's entirely true: we'll be choosing whether to go back to what went on under Bush, or what's happened since. Makes it simpler for everyone, whatever side they're on. (Some might argue that it's not exactly like Bush, because these guys want to cut spending so drastically. To which I'd reply: same basic policies; just more people hurt.)

The problem for Rs -- and it's implicit in their explicit expunging of George W from their conversations -- is that they know they're offering nothing different from the Bush years, and they know how disastrous it was for the country. What's less obvious, but certainly must be true, is that the ones pushing return to those days aren't thinking about the country at all. They're thinking about their personal wealth, how to retain it at all costs, how to increase it, even if it's at the expense of everyone else. There's no other way to explain it.

If the election really were about what it's really about, it'd be a landslide; or so you'd think, if it weren't for some of the comments here, which indicate facts have nothing to do with it. For teabaggers, that's obviously true; the question is how many of them there still are out there, deeply the Foxification has penetrated, and whether, at this late date, anything can penetrate it.

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