George W. Bush has chosen to visit Columbus, GA instead of speaking at this year's GOP Convention in Tampa. The party clearly wants to pretend that he never existed, and it's performing the equivalent of removing Trotsky from photographs after Stalin ousted him.
For some strange reason, the GOP doesn't want people to recall who occupied the WH from 1/20/01-1/20/09. What's even stranger, however, given this set of circumstances, is the party's choice of nominee. There are 10 obvious parallels between the man that they're about to nominate and their last POTUS:
1) Both W and Mitt attended tony prep schools;
2) Both W and Mitt have MBA's from Harvard;
3) Both W and Mitt have/had fathers who ran for president;
4) Both W's and Mitt's fathers were defeated in their final try for that office, thereby creating a desire to restore the family name;
5) Both W and Mitt are visibly to the right of their fathers ideologically;
6) Both W and Mitt are extremely hawkish in foreign policy, and over 70% of Romney's top 40 foreign policy advisors served in W's WH;
7) Neither W nor Mitt served in the military during Vietnam;
8) Both W and Mitt support low marginal rates for top brackets;
9) Neither W nor Mitt would ever dream of confronting the religious right; and
10) Both W and Mitt support a "drill baby drill" approach to energy policy.
The GOP is going out of the way to discourage people from seeing the giant elephant in the room, yet its nominee has 10 obvious parallels to that elephant. Those 10 were ones I was able to come up w/ fairly quickly--I'm sure that others could come up w/ additional parallels. It will be much harder to come up w/ 10 (or even 5) major differences between the 2 men.
A defining question of this race, accordingly, should be exactly how Romney distinguishes himself and his policies from W and his policies. I really don't think he can do so. Cutting taxes on "job creators" and reducing regulations didn't turn out to well from 2001-09, why would it work better this time?
The basic GOP theme this fall will be that Obama's policies have been tried and have been found wanting. We will inevitably hear the "are you better off now" question that proved to be so damaging in 1980. That challenge begs the question, however, as to how or why restoring the policies (and much of the personnel) of Obama's predecessor will produce superior results. Electing an entitled scion of a wealthy and powerful family to pursue policies that favor the top .01% over everyone else makes no more sense now than installing an entitled scion of a wealthy and poweful family made 12 year ago. Highlighting that essential fact is going to be critical in this campaign.