A 2008 campaign about Bush

My latest piece at Newsweek, and the first that will be featured in the print magazine:

In his first Inaugural Address, Ronald Reagan remarked that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." While the quip has provided Republicans with a cheap slogan for two decades, the philosophy behind it is beginning to box them in. If they govern effectively, they invalidate their own antigovernment ideology. And when you elect people who believe that government won't work, you shouldn't be surprised when government stops working [...]

Democrats should and will use Bush and his destructive policies on the campaign trail as the primary example of what happens when people who hate government are elected to run it. The message will be that Bush isn't a historical anomaly: he's the embodiment of modern conservatism.

If Americans want willfully ineffective government, they'll have a Republican Party desperate for their votes. But with 70 percent of the American people thinking the nation is on the wrong track, it's clear they expect the opposite. As long as Democrats make that contrast clear—and Bush's record will be integral to that argument—they should be headed for victory in 2008.

Republicans will desperately try to argue that Bush is off-limits in the 2008 debate, since he's not running for reelection. The problem is, of course, that every Republican running for office in 2008 is a Bush Republican. They all stood by him and supported his every policy decision for over seven years (and counting). The one issue they parted ways? The one in which Bush (and Rove) were right: Immigration.

So it's quite salient, no matter how much Republicans may pray for Bush amnesia, for voters to be reminded what Bush Republicanism looks like.

Here's Rove's effort, which is about Hillary's mirror, how she's never been nice to him (why would she be nice to him?), and how she's something that rhymes with "rich". And while he purports to give "advice" to Republicans, much of it laughable (like "play nice with the brown people"), he never mentions the only issue Republicans are still comfortable campaigning on: immigration. Funny omission, that one.